


Turn Back the Clock

by Bluandorange



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: 1930s Ableism, Age Regression/De-Aging, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Asphyxiation, Asthma, Choking, Depression, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Eating Disorders, Established Relationship, Food Issues, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Memory Loss, Panic Attacks, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Racism, Physical Abuse, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Psychological Trauma, Skinny!Steve/Winter Soldier, Suicidal Thoughts, Time Travel, erotic asphyxiation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-03
Updated: 2016-10-24
Packaged: 2018-01-21 19:29:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 50
Words: 48,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1561445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluandorange/pseuds/Bluandorange
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam and Steve have tracked the Winter Soldier back to New York, but they have to put their search on hold when a wizard starts robbing banks on Broadway. During the fight, Steve gets hit with a spell that separates him from the rest of the Avengers, leaves him 10 inches shorter, 145 pounds lighter, and convinced the year's still 1943.</p><p>And of course once Steve's forgotten about him, he runs into the Winter Soldier.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 5:06 pm

**Author's Note:**

> So I have [a Thing](http://bluandorange.tumblr.com/post/82371628029/here-to-the-end-of-the-line) [about](http://bluandorange.tumblr.com/post/82244709674/something-thatll-never-happen-but-makes-me-happy) [Skinny!Steve/WS!Bucky](http://bluandorange.tumblr.com/post/83635196250/katchan00-replied-to-your-post-i-swear-to-fuck) and if you have a similar 'thing' and have done similar work? You should link me. You should totally link me. 
> 
> Follow me [on Tumblr](http://bluandorange.tumblr.com/) for chapter snippets as they come to me. I promise I will only bring joy (and character angst) to your dashboard.

> artwork by [fait-hunter](http://fait-hunter.tumblr.com/)

 

* * *

 

Steve stares at the doors leading to his—what should be his apartment building. They’re all glass, framing painted yellow, and he’s never seen them before in his life. He forms fists in his pockets, and the grooves of his apartment key bite into his right palm. 

He’s pretty sure if he crossed the street and tried his key on that lock, it wouldn’t work.  

The realization is, well, crushing. He should’ve seen it coming, he really should’ve—‘never seen it before in my life’ could about sum up his day—but…getting here, getting  _home_  had kept him moving. It’d given him a goal. Now…

Well, now he might have to face the fact he has no earthly idea  _where_  he is. 

According to the signs, to the streets, he’s in New York. According those signs on those streets along the route he’d taken, he’d gone from Chambers and Broadway across the bridge home to Brooklyn. 

But this wasn’t  _his_  Brooklyn. He’d walked hours and hours, hoping beyond hope, betting on the off chance that his apartment would at  _least_  still be where he left it, and he’d lost that bet. It’d carried him this far and now he just. 

Steve has nothing. 

Steve presses his back into bricks of the building what used to be a bank—looks like it is one again, though the big ‘CHASE’ logo sure has changed—and tries to keep his head on his shoulders. 

He’s not sure, maybe he’s just cracked. That would explain it, right? Not seeing things how they are, seeing—seeing something impossible instead, that made him a nut, right? What was the alternative; that he’d woken up in the gutter somewhere, not with a few screws knocked lose, but genuinely, honestly,  _actually_  in an alternate version of New York? And the cars really _were_ sleeker and quieter and the signs were bright and  _vivid_  and  _moving_  and everyone had—Christ, he doesn’t know— _walkie-talkies_  the shape of sliced bread to devote their attention to. 

He squeezes his eyes shut, pinches the crooked bridge of his nose with his forefinger and thumb and tries not to think about how fucking  _insane_  that sounds, even in his own head. Even in his own head, he couldn’t reconcile all this. Did that happen to crazies? Was it normal, to know you couldn’t _really_ be seeing what you were seeing, and just be stuck seeing it anyways?

What was he going to do? 

"If this is a bad dream," he mutters to himself, "I wish I’d just wake  _up_ already.”

Earlier that morning, Steve had woken up to a coughing fit. That wasn’t all that unusual, he just didn’t usually wake up to a coughing fit in the middle of an unfamiliar alley, half buried in trash. The most logical conclusion was he’d been out drinking. Now, he hadn’t  _remembered_  drinking, let alone could recall what would possess him to go all the way into New York City to do it, he just couldn’t deny the fact he had a pounding headache and no godly recollection how he’d come to be where he was. Which kinda pointed to drinking. 

And as embarrassing as it may be, drinking would make sense. No one could fault him for it—he was practically in mourning. With Bucky off to basic, and Steve not an inch closer to following him, he had more than enough sorrows to warrant something to drown them with. And for the first hour, it was easy to believe that was the case. Steve was hung-over as hell and felt it. If things were off, he ignored them. All he wanted to do was get home. 

Hours later, he still has a headache, but he thinks this one’s from fear. He doesn’t want a blue-card, he doesn’t want to lose the independence he’s fought for all his life just because his brain up and decided it wanted to be like every other part of his body  _and break_. 

But, okay. If he really was just seeing things wrong—if it was brain damage and not actual, physical changes—the key in his pocket should work on that yellow door. Right? 

Steve opens his eyes and looks across the street. Yes, his apartment building is still there and yes, the door to the lobby is still yellow. (There’s a sign to a children’s daycare on one side and on the other, one that says ‘sushi’ in neon. Neither of these are familiar either. He tries not to dwell, he really, really does.) He steels himself, draws in a deep breath and tells himself if that door doesn’t open, it won’t be the end of the world, and he’s not gonna crack. No one’s gonna blue-card Steve Rogers, and he sure as hell ain’t gonna give them reason to by causing a scene. 

He takes one step forward and someone steps in front of him and forces him back, a hand to his chest pinning him to the wall. Steve’s got the guy by the wrist before he even looks at his face. His face—his  _face_  strikes Steve dumb, he can’t be seeing who he thinks he’s seeing. 

“ _Bucky_?” 

Oh Christ, he’s gotta be dreaming. Only in a dream would Bucky Barnes allow himself to look this haggard. He’s bearded, his hair’s curling round his jacket collar, and it’s been over a month since Steve’s seen him, sure, but there’s no way his hair could grow that long that  _fast_. He smells awful, looks  _awful_ , but he’s. He’s definitely Bucky, Steve would know him anywhere. 

He shouldn’t be here, though, he’s ‘sposed to be in _basic!_

Bucky’s gripping his shoulder now, eyes gone wide and there’s panic on his face, in the way his breath’s come in short and fast. Any reprimand Steve could give about him, well,  _ditching the army_ , dies right there on his tongue. Bucky looks at least half as terrified as Steve feels. 

"You…you were…" Bucky starts—voice cracking, so dry and breathless, he looks so confused—and pauses to wet his lips. "Taller, when…When I last…"

"What?" Steve’s mouth runs on autopilot. "Bathed? Had a haircut?  _Jesus_ , Buck…” His eyes drag over him again, from his filthy hair to his unfamiliar, mud-caked shoes, back up to the utterly lost expression on his face. Steve’s voice softens automatically. “I’d…I’d march you upstairs and get you sorted, I jus’ dunno if I can get us into our apartment.” 

Bucky’s expression has settled somewhere along the lines of dazed, eyes gone glassy. Steve is suddenly concerned he’s stopped listening. 

"Bucky," he says, slowly, taking one lapel of his jacket. That seems to get his attention. "How much did you drink?"

At first the question seems to confuse him and it takes him far too long to suss out what Steve could mean. Almost like he’s drunk. Very, very drunk. Eventually, though, Bucky shakes his head and croaks out, “nothing.”

"Are you sure?" Steve can’t smell any alcohol on him, but he  _can_ smell that he hasn’t bathed in weeks and he’s no expert, but he thinks it may be possible the BO is drowning out the bourbon at this point. 

Something flickers across Bucky’s face, sparked by the question, and he goes from confused to livid in a breath. He pins Steve with renewed strength, and now his hand’s half around his shoulder and his thumb’s caught against the base of Steve’s windpipe, an ounce of pressure away from cutting off his airway.

Like Steve could breathe with the furious way Bucky’s staring him down. 

In his lifetime, Steve’s seen the promise of violence written in the posture of hundreds of men, all of them just bleeding their intention to ruin him. He’s seen Bucky’s posture at others, mostly for Steve’s sake. Never at him. Never once _at_ him.

“ _Stop_ ,” Bucky says, teeth bared. “ _I’m_. Asking. The Questions.” Each word is bitten off with such effort, it’s like he’s struggling with himself to get them out, fighting to make each heard. 

Steve’s landed himself in a nightmare. Steve nods. 


	2. 1st Interlude

"People don’t just  _disappear_.”

"They do if they were vaporized."

"TONY."

“ _What?!_  We’re all thinking it!” 

“ _I_  wasn’t!”

"You’re new, Wilson, don’t worry, you’ll catch up."

"Did that guy even have the  _ability_  to vaporize people?” 

"He’s a magic user; we’re not sure  _what_  the extent of his abilities are. We won’t be able to ask until he wakes up, and we don’t want him to wake up until Thor gets here.” 

"Okay, but. But just because Cap’s missing doesn’t mean he’s been vaporized."

"Hey, I never said it did. All I did was bring up the most obvious conclusion. And barring that, there’s still teleportation, atomization,  _miniaturization._ Honey I’ve  _Shrunk_  the Cap.” 

"And what if it wasn’t the wizard?"

"Why wouldn’t it be the wizard? Who else could it be?" 

"How about the Winter Soldier?"

"Wait, wait, what?"  _  
_

"We’d tracked him here, but falling off the map, that’s his MO. He’s been doing it to us for months, and everyone else for years. And all’a you go out there to fight that magic guy and the only one who drops off the map is Cap. Yeah, its possible the wizard did something to him, but its possible he got knocked down—"

"—and the Winter Soldier got to him before we did."


	3. 5:41 pm

Steve wakes up mid-fall. The only thing what keeps him from cracking his neck on the curb is a gloved hand that catches him under his pit and hoists him bodily to his feet and out of the car. It takes a few blinks before it registers that the hand belongs to Bucky. 

Or rather this scary, dirty version of Bucky he's stuck with. 

Steve tries to back out of his grip but that puts him right against the car door—there’s nowhere else to go—and Bucky, he doesn’t seem to like Steve resisting. They glare at each other.

There has been a lot of glaring in the past hour. 

Steve wishes he could say ‘only in a dream would Bucky Barnes steal a car’, but that would be a bold-faced lie. They’d  _both_  known how to hot-wire a Ford since high-school. Hell, he’d always been better at it than Bucky. He wasn’t proud of it, it’s a miracle they never got caught, and they hadn’t pulled a stunt like that since before graduation, but it happened. So he wasn’t entirely surprised when Bucky manhandled him over to one of the round-edged, low-baring cars parked along the side-street and started breaking into it. Bucky seemed desperate enough to chance it.

And even though Steve was pissed at him, he’d kept an eye out for coppers anyways. Bucky wasn’t just breaking into a car; he was breaking into a car while on the run from the draft. He may not  _deserve_  Steve covering his ass, but he was getting it anyways. 

Probably because Steve was whipped.

Turned out Bucky hadn’t much need for Steve’s eyes, though. He’d jimmied the door open with just his left hand, which caused a  _racket_  that made Steve jump back and cover his ears as horns and whistles started blaring, the car’s lights blinking on and off. If it’d been him, Steve would’ve turned tail right there—that ruckus could  _only_ be there to draw attention he didn’t want—but Bucky hardly seemed to notice. One yanked wire later, the noise just stopped, and Bucky was out of the car again and grabbing for Steve, taking him by the back of the neck and forcing him through the driver’s side door and across the stick-shift to the passenger’s seat. 

Oh, and by the way? Bucky had a  _gun_. 

Yeah. Like his fists weren’t enough, he’d pulled a pistol out of his pocket and put it to the small of Steve’s back as they’d been walking. “Try to run and I will aim for your knees,” he’d said. 

"Great," Steve said. And if he’d been shaking, it was out of anger that Bucky thought he had to threaten him this way. 

But anyway, Steve sat down in the passenger’s seat and turned to find Bucky with the gun out, again. 

"I’m not going anywhere," Steve said with a note of resentment. Bucky’s eyes jumped from Steve’s face, to his hands balled into fists in his lap and back again, and they’d glared at each other until he finally seemed convinced Steve wasn’t lying to him, and he started the car.

The ride had been quiet—Steve fuming and tired and Bucky not seeming in the mood for conversation—and slow going what with the evening traffic. The car drove smooth even when it did go more than 3 feet at a time, and Bucky’d outgrown his lead foot, so they always came to an impossibly gentle stop. Steve couldn’t rightly help it if he fell asleep. 

He’d walked from Broadway to Brooklyn. He’d spent the whole day scared half to death and convinced he was going out of his mind, and even though his best friend was taking him someplace at gunpoint, he still had his best friend. His fear of the outside world was ebbing away and with it went all his energy. He’d stuck Bucky with a half-decent stinkeye for maybe five minutes before he’d curled up against the door and went out like a light. 

Now they’ve apparently reached wherever Bucky wants them to be. Steve’s glare flicks away from the hollow, sunken eyes in front of him and to the buildings just past Bucky’s shoulders. They're red-bricked and weatherworn and absolutely covered in graffiti. The docks smell close, sound it. Besides their shared breathing, the docks is about all Steve can hear. 

He meets Bucky’s eyes again. “You aimin’ for some privacy?”

Bucky’s hand closes around his arm and he marches him away from the street into the nearest alley, none too gently. Right, right, Steve isn’t allowed to ask questions, he remembers now. Christ, if it were anyone else in the world…

Steve gets shoved off to one side of the alley—“No running.”, “Yeah. Sure.”—as Bucky works the fire-escape ladder loose on the other. It doesn’t quite reach the ground and instead of letting Steve just jump up to it himself, Bucky picks him up under his pits and lifts him onto the bars. For a moment Steve’s too stunned to do much than hang there, staring down at the guy over his shoulder. The hell was he doing, treating Steve like a child? He’d lifted him up and placed him there like he’s some fucking  _child_ —

“ _Climb_ ,” Bucky growls. 

With great difficulty, Steve blinks away the fury, limits his response to a muttered, “ _Ass_ hole.” and climbs. 

Bucky follows a step behind and herds him into the first open window they come across. The inside of the building is gutted and abandoned, covered in years of squatter's filth and animal droppings. And yet it still smells better than Bucky.  _Especially_  since the guy keeps crowding into Steve's personal space like he owns it--yeah, maybe a month ago, but now he's got all his rights revoked on account of being a crazy  _jackass_. 

Steve stares back cooly, expression unyielding even as he's backed into another wall and held there. "Y'know, you really don't have to--"

" _Shuddup,"_ Bucky snaps. "I've--I've  _questions_." Who the hell is he trying to convince here, Steve or himself? God, it's really hard to stay mad at a guy who seems so lost and unhinged. Seeing Bucky this undone makes Steve chest constrict in new ways, sticks him with a sharper pain. Anger is hot and heady. This fear is different, and far, far worse than the fear what clung to him on the walk home. 

All that is to say Steve can't keep up the cold shoulder. His expression buckles and its edges soften. "Then ask," he says, just loud enough for the two of them. 

Bucky's mouth works for a moment, but he doesn't say a word. Steve can see him working through something, working himself up  _to_ something, so he just waits. Eventually Bucky comes to some conclusion, blows out a breath through his nostrils and starts digging in one of his pockets. What he decides to pull out seems to be a beaten up pamphlet. He shoves it in Steve's face.

For all the wear it's seen, it's still gotta be the most gorgeous, glossy paper Steve's ever laid eyes on. The colors are so bright, so highly saturated, he's no idea how they got it printed, Christ, he can't even see the individual ink dots...

Bucky shakes the pamphlet, making the paper snap, and Steve blinks out of his artistic reverie. "How'd you change?" Bucky asks, expression stern. Steve squints at him, then between him and the paper, then at the paper itself. Besides it being a technical work of art, all Steve sees is a guy dressed up like the 4th of July personified. He guesses that'd be Captain America of the Captain America exhibit, now showing at the Smithsonian, since the guy is smack-dab in the middle of the ad that takes up the whole cover of the brochure. What the hell that has to do with him changing, he's no idea. Bucky doesn't seem to like his surprised silence and decides to prompt him a shake. 

"I--I dunno," Steve says. "I dunno, whaddaya mean?" 

Bucky purses his lips so tightly they go white. His eyes are alive now with intense frustration. He thinks Steve is lying. He takes his hand off Steve's chest and points to the man on the cover. "You were  _this_ ," he says. "What. Happened?" Steve follows his finger with his eyes, looks Captain America right in the face. Recognition hits and, absently, he feels his own face go slack. 

That's him. That's Steve, on the poster, that's  _him. That's his face, that's his fucking face._

 _"..._ this a joke?" Steve asks, and it has to be one. His face, on that body, its not possible. Who the hell would do something like that? Why would some  _stranger_  draw  _him_  like--

Bucky slams him into the wall hard enough to bruise and shouts, voice pitching from stress; "I'm not joking!" And he's not, Steve can tell. He's entirely serious and he's furious that Steve would suggest he's not, that Steve isn't playing along and isn't giving him the answer he wants, but he's giving him the only answer there  _is_ , he can't  _do_  anything else. 

"Bucky," he says, raising his voice right back, "that's not  _me!_ It's a drawing--it's just a  _drawing_ \--"

The hand on his chest fists itself around Steve's shirt and tie, holds him there, knuckles pressing into his sternum, as Bucky stares into him and starts to recite; "Denied enlistment due to poor health--" and he's definitely reciting something, his face has gone blank and the words tumble out clearer and faster than anything else he's said in the past two hours, all in a steady monotone, "--Steven Rogers was chosen--" Fucking hell, he says his name like he's never met him before, like its just a word like any of the others, and Steve can't breathe, "--for a program unique in the annals of American warfare one that would transform him into--"

"What is this?" The question bursts out of him, voice higher and louder than he means it to be, but he's freaking out, okay, he's freaking  _out_. "What the hell is this?  _Bucky."_ He says his name and he says it like he  _means_ _it_  because  _he does_  and it knocks something lose, because Bucky's grip slackens and the confusion returns to his face, his eyes wide. He stares at Steve like he's the one with the gun, Steve's the one threating  _his_  life, but not like he's his friend, and Steve takes him by both shoulders, thinks better of it, moves his hands up to holds his cheeks. "Bucky," he says, "This is  _crazy_ , are you hearing yourself? Bucky, are you even  _in_ there?" Bucky shifts, an aborted attempt to pull away--because he could if he wanted to, Steve isn't holding him in a death grip, he's just holding him--and makes a small noise, and its like something breaking in there, Steve just knows it. "Bucky," he says, "you  _know_  me. You do, you know me. I'm not that guy, I'm just me, an'--and y'know I'm here for you, I'm not goin' anywhere. You don't gotta push me around, Buck, you just gotta tell me where you want me and I'll stay, you  _know that_. It's always been that way. Since we were kids. You've known me your whole  _life_ , you know it, you  _know_  you have." _  
_

Bucky's eyes drop at that, brow creasing as his eyelids flutter, and he starts to mumble, "best fr--friends since childhood Bucky Barnes and Steven Rogers were inseparable on both schoolyard and battle--"

"Stop!" Steve takes him by the shoulders again and gives him a shake. (One shoulder gives like it should, but the other doesn't, feels stiff, unnaturally rigid; Steve brushes this information away.) "What're you  _talking_  about?" 

Bucky's eyes are wide and dark, but they meet Steve's again and Steve holds him there, holds his gaze. "...exhibit," Bucky croaks. Steve almost asks what about it, but Bucky keeps going, forming the words with his lips carefully, shakily, before saying them aloud. "I. M-my... _my_  face."

"Whaddabout your face?" Steve asks. They're whispering to each other, now. Sharing secrets.

"It's there." Bucky's face grows tighter and tighter, like he's trying to keep a grip on himself, like if his grip isn't strong enough, if it slips even an inch, he'll fly apart. "Is he me?" His voice is quiet and tinny and broken, and it cracks in half over the last word.

Steve sets his shoulders. He reaches for Bucky's face again, even though he flinches, and holds both of his bristled, dirty cheeks in his hands, and he makes Bucky look at him as he states, plain as day, " _you_  are James Buchanan Barnes. Always have been. Always will be." 


	4. 2nd Interlude

"So you robbed three banks to pay for  _college_.”

"Well, my loans, I’ve already—"

"What, been to Hogwarts?" 

"A-an art school in Michigan but—"

"Nope, seven books was enough, I don’t need anymore of your sob-story, Harry Potter, just tell us what you did to Captain America and we’ll be good." 

"W-what I did? I mean…well i-it should be obvious, right?"

"Yeah, probably would be if we could find him."

"W-What?"

"Oh, so you mean he  _wasn’t_ supposed to disappear?”

"Wha—no! No, no, nothing like that—it—all it was ‘sposed to do is disarm him!"

“ _How_?”

"Well…it’s--it's a time spell. Everyone knows he wasn’t always, y’know, big and strong. I just. I turned back the clock a little. To before the serum. I-it was very precise—I didn’t want to hurt him! I didn’t want to hurt anybody!" 

"What about a counter-spell? Is this vegan magic of yours reversible?" 

"Y-Yes, yes, it wears off after 24 hours." 


	5. 6:17 pm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did y'all know that before the serum, Steve was partially deaf? I didn't. Anyways enjoy the chapter.

They burn the pamphlet. 

After he got Bucky to calm down—after Bucky crumbled and pressed into Steve’s shoulder, and Steve held him while he trembled, and petted through his nasty hair, too matted and tangled for him to get to the scalp and feel for a scar or a set of stitches—Steve announced he was gonna get rid of that pamphlet. He'd planned to just rip it to shreds, stick his hand out the window and let the glossy confetti blow away in the wind. Instead, Bucky pulled out a lighter.

He’d handed it and the Smithsonian broacher to Steve with this frown, this reluctant, kicked puppy frown like he was regretting his choices, but wasn’t ready to go back on them yet. Like he still wanted them to be the  _right_  choice. Stubborn, but relenting. Bucky hadn’t wanted to burn it, but now he was deferring to Steve, so he let him do it anyways.

The fire takes to the paper almost immediately, and Steve stands upwind and watches the beautifully printed lies curl and darken. When there’s nothing left of his face, when the flames have eaten Captain America whole, he stomps the fire out. 

Bucky stares at the ashes like he’s lost something. With a sickening twinge, Steve realizes he’s the one who took it away.

"It was nothing but trouble," Steve says, and he knows he’s trying to convince them both. He hates that he’s caused Bucky pain, but he won't apologize. He’s stubborn, too. He’s regretting his choices; he wanted them to be the  _right_  ones.

He wants Bucky to fight him on that, but he doesn’t. Bucky mourns the little booklet in silence, until his eyes drift away and lose focus. 

Steve’s stomach makes a pretzel. This is all  _so_ wrong. It’s  _sick_ how wrong this is. He hates this, and he doesn’t know what to do, or how things got so fucked. 

He steps forward and gives one of Bucky’s arms a push. “Hey—” and he cuts himself off, because the arm doesn’t budge an  _inch_ , it doesn’t even sway. It’s unnaturally solid and Steve stares, moves to push it again, only Bucky turns before he gets there, effectively putting the arm out of Steve’s reach and blocking it with his own body. Steve looks up and finds Bucky considering him with a pinched expression. Sizing him up. Steve straights, squares his shoulders. “What?”

Buck’s still so slow to answer—

—Steve doesn’t know why he’s having so much trouble, why he’s struggling with his words, it scares him, it isn’t  _right, what happened—_

 _—_ but after a moment he asks, “you’ll follow me?”

Steve wants to scream. He doesn’t. He says, “yeah.” Seems Bucky doesn’t need much more than that. He turns and stalks out of the room and, as promised, Steve follows. 

He's led through the building, down to the basement. Bucky stops in front of a power door lock, and Steve realizes if this door's still running, this place must still be getting electricity. Bucky stares at the key pad for a good minute before he punches in the combination. Steve wants to ask how he knows it, where the hell they are even, but he holds off. He can't hear if the locks disengage, but they must, cuz a second later Bucky's twisting the handle and shouldering the door open.

There’s an apartment behind the door. It’s got a cot to one side, a sink, a crapper and a shower head positioned over a drain in the opposite corner, and the barebones of a kitchen taking up whatever space’s left. 

Steve relaxes just a hair. They have some place to stay. Thank  _God_.

"Good job, Buck," he says, giving his friend a pat on the shoulder before he heads on inside. He doesn't get a response--not a verbal one, anyways--but he hears when Bucky sits himself down against one of the walls. Steve lets him be, starts making himself useful by seeing what's all in the cabinets. 

Not much, turns out. 

There's nothing around the washroom area; no toilet paper, no soap, no rags. He tries the sink and is pleased to find it works. He's even more pleased by the fully functional shower.

In the cabinets is a gutted first-aid case, picked clean of bandages or sutures but left with plenty of shit Steve's never seen before and wouldn't know how to use. A bunch of medicine packets if he had to guess.  _Neosporin_ , what the hell?

They luck out when it comes to food. Its not a feast or anything, but it's something--more than they had. Not a damn thing is written in English, though, so at first Steve doesn't know what the little plastic wrapped bars are. Turns out they're granola. Or something like it. He grabs a couple and heads over to pop a squat in front of Bucky. 

Damned idiot still looks out of it. Maybe worse than before, just. Just vacant. 

"Hey." Steve leans in, waves the bar in his face until Bucky raises his head. "C'mon, I found some food." He wishes he were surprised by Buck's lack of a reaction, but he's not, mostly it just makes him sad. " _Here_ ,"he says, and he takes one of Bucky's hands and presses the food against his palm and closes his still-gloved fingers around it. "Eat."  _  
_

The order, at least, Bucky understands. With mechanical precision, he unwraps the bar and starts taking it down in large bites. Steve follows suit. For a moment, its just them, their chewing, and the buzz of the overhead lights.

"We'll have to go out again," Steve says, and he's surprised by just how fast that draws Bucky's attention. The look he gives is almost expectant. Steve elaborates; "there's no soap. And you smell like shit." For some reason that  _doesn't_  get a reaction. Steve makes a choice between feeling afraid or annoyed, and he goes with annoyed. "I'm not stickin' around if you don't get cleaned up. So we should go, before it gets too late."

Bucky doesn't argue. Bucky doesn't say anything, just nods, finishes his meal and follows Steve back to the car. 

Ten minutes later, they're sitting in front of a pharmacy called 'CVS' and Steve's psyching himself up before he goes inside. He doesn't have his wallet. All he has in his pockets are his key, a folded wad of sketching paper and a nubby broken pencil. He's checked the glove compartment and couldn't find any cash.

As his last resort, he turns to Bucky and says, "I don't suppose you've got any money on you." The answer is about what Steve expects; a slow blink then a shake of the head. "Great."

Christ, he hasn't done this since he was a kid.

He runs a hand over his mouth then puts it on the door handle. "Okay. Wait here." 


	6. 3rd Interlude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so apparently pre-serum, Steve was also color blind. I am learning so much writing this, omg.
> 
> [someone](daughteroftheseaandsky) over on tumblr [told me their headcanon](http://bluandorange.tumblr.com/post/85093245070/the-conversation-about-steves-deafness-made-me-think) that Steve has tritanopia colorblindness, mostly because that would [limit his perception of color to only red, whites, blues and blacks](http://www.color-blindness.com/wp-content/images/tritanopia-color-spectrum.jpg). It, like partial deafness, can be caused by one too many hits to the head.
> 
> ps if you come back to this and think 'this sure does look shorter', then congratulations! You caught me before I broke the fourth interlude off the end of this one. So you're technically ahead of the curve. Everyone else, it'll be back up shortly. Next chapter's almost done anyways.

"Anything?"

"Afraid not."

"I don’t get it; if he’s a God who sees everything, why's this giving him so much trouble?"

"Heimdall sees all within the nine realms, but to find our Captain, he knows not where to look, save for the within the confines of this state, New York. And, perhaps, New Jersey."

"So, needle in the haystack."

"That is an apt analogy, yes."

"Y’like that? I came up with it on the spot."

"Uh, hey, Thor, has he been able to maybe rule out any place?"

"I know not. And there is yet one more problem; that of the Captain’s visage."

"Uh…?"

"There’s something wrong with his face? What’s wrong with his face? His face should’ve been the only thing that stayed the  _same._ ”

"That, Anthony, is the problem. His face is very popular, as I assume it would be, as he is a hero, and this is the city of his birth." 

"Are you saying Heimdall is getting confused by Captain America  _memorabilia_.”

"Aye."

"Okay, I get now why we never tried this before. It’s because it doesn’t work." 

"We may just have to wait for the spell to wear off."

"He may need our help  _before_  then.”


	7. 7:36 pm

Steve tries to breathe and swat at Bucky’s arm at the same time. Maintaining the combination is harder than it has any right to be.

"Put—" he gasps, "th’gun.  _D_ _own_.” While he presses the heel of one hand to the burning tightness what’s blossomed behind his sternum, he keeps smacking Bucky with the other. 

It’d be nice if he could just catch his breath after getting the shit scared out of him. It’d be nice if he had a moment to recoup, instead of having to talk his friend down the second he’s gotten into the car. Apparently nice things don’t happen to Steve Rogers. What the fuck else is new?

Steve isn’t sure he even  _saw_  the gates when he walked into that store. He was trying to stay focused, trying to stay  _on task_ in the face of something he knew had every right to send him reeling. He’d kept his eyes to the floor. He didn't see gates, he just saw concrete transition to tiles.

If he’s honest, and he rarely is about this crap, he’d had the beginnings of a panic induced asthma-attack after about a minute of being in there. There was just—it was so  _bright_ , and there was so much  _shit_  on the  _shelves_ , every time he glanced up they were stocked full to bursting, not a space left in-between, and his mind kept wandering, wanting to know where it all came from, what it was all for, and why the fuck no one had been there to stop his homely ass from getting inside. Fuck him,  _the prices_ _of things_  were ridiculous! He wasn’t in a pharmacy, he was in a fucking fat cat’s bazaar! 

He really shouldn’t’ve pushed through it—if he’d been caught stealing in that kind of establishment, he would’ve gotten time, no two ways about it—but he did, partly cuz he knew he didn’t have another run in him. It was this, or go back empty handed and resort to a spit-shine to get Bucky into shape. He  _could_  do that, but he was already  _there_ , in the store, halfway down the aisle, so why waste it? 

He tried to keep his browsing to quick sweeps, strictly no staring. It was like shopping half-blind, and its not like he really knew his way around to begin with, so it took a while to find what he’d come there for. Him happening upon the vaseline was pure chance. He didn’t even think, he just grabbed it and kept walking, shoving it into his pants pocket the moment he rounded the next row of shelves.

This was about the only time his damned oversized pants came in handy. The space between his knobby knees and the fabric made for deep pockets and plenty of room to conceal just about anything he stuffed in them. No one paid him much mind, but it'd always been that way. So long as he kept his mouth shut, their eyes glanced off him all on their own. That's why Bucky could never get away with this kind of stuff. His presence filled a room and people took notice. That's why it always had to be Steve. 

A few minutes later, he had a box what promised to hold a bar of soap in his other pocket and he was heading for the door. 

He saw the big grey gates about two seconds before he got to them. They stood perpendicular to the exit, gates he had to pass through if he wanted to leave, and the second he stepped in, they flashed and whistled sharply and Steve fucking knew he’d been made, so he took off like a shot, yelling for Bucky to start the car. 

Maybe if he hadn’t made such a production out of it, Bucky wouldn’t look so frantic now. Maybe if Steve had kept his head level, Buck wouldn’t think there was anyone he’d need to shoot at. 

But Steve hadn’t kept his head, so now his head’s left wanting for oxygen while he deals with his equally panicked friend. 

Bucky honestly listens pretty quick. The gun’s brought down and that frees up Steve’s hand, which is great, because now he can start working his tie loose, fucking christ, fuck,  _fuck_ , fucking  _dammit_. 

As he attempts to wet his pallet, he shoots a glance to Bucky and finds him staring right at Steve. That is a problem. That is a problem first and foremost because they are in a moving vehicle that Bucky's supposed to be maintaining control of, and Steve tries to remind him of this by waving a finger at the road. Secondly, Bucky looks terrified, which isn’t helping Steve calm down, not one bit. 

Bucky pulls over so fast, Steve’s knocked sideways into passenger door and this squawking sound comes out of him when he hits, and he just hates. Literally everything. He just wants to  _breathe_ , and for everything to  _stop_ , and for him to fucking  _breathe_. 

Bucky pulls him off the door by his shoulders, holding them a little too tight, and goes, “ _Steve_?” and Steve doesn’t need to look, he can hear the fear there in his voice. He hates that most. Definitely hates that most. 

Bucky’s known him the longest out of anybody. He knows this sort of thing happens. He knows Steve hates to be fussed over, to cause a ruckus, to make a scene. He knows a million ways to help Steve when he gets like this, so why the  _fuck_ isn’t he treating Steve right? Why the  _fuck_ does  _everything_  have to be  _so messed up and wrong?_

"Don’t—" he says, and he’s all elbows and knuckles as he tries to detach himself from Bucky. The second he’s free, he’s pressing himself back, fitting himself against the corner where the seat meets the door, left hand still raised, palm open, to keep Bucky from following. He doesn’t, and Steve doesn’t look at him, he just tries to breathe. 

Steve stares at his shoes and he breathes. 

Bucky asked once what one of his attacks felt like. Steve couldn’t say at first, because they felt like a lot of things. Bucky tried to help; Bucky asked if it was like holding your breath under water. Steve knew it wasn’t like that. Bucky asked if it was like when it got really muggy outside during the summer. Steve could see how they were similar, but he knew there was a difference between breathing hot air and not being able to breathe enough air. Bucky asked if it was like being choked (something neither of them had experienced yet). That gave Steve an idea. 

Steve found a straw and gave it to Bucky. “You can’t breathe through your nose, y’gotta plug it,” he’d said. “You can only breathe through this.” 

Bucky couldn’t even do it for a full minute.

Steve said, “they're like that.” 

They’d been kids. 

Now Steve is twenty-four and the only sound in the car is his gasping. He doesn’t even try to be quiet, and its about the most pathetic he’s sounded in a good while, but he doesn’t care anymore. He’s done caring. 

And he knows the more he thinks about all the fucked up things he's stuck dealing with, the longer the attack’ll go on, so he tries not to care about any of that shit, either. And really, the world can’t’ve changed too much if he still has to deal with  _this_. The whole world may’ve gone to hell or changed over night or  _whatever_ , but at least Steve can always rely on his body to be a broken piece of  _shit_. 

He doesn't know how long it takes him to calm down, but when the burn turns to an ache, and his throat  _hurts_ but stays open, he sits back and wipes his mouth and brushes his hair back from his face. His hair's sweat soaked and limp--hell, he's sweaty all over, can feel the damp of it on his exposed neck and collar bone, wet skin growing chilled as the air cools around him. He wipes at the sweat there, too, and gives a raspy sigh. "Great. Now we both gotta shower." 

"Steve," Bucky says. His voice is low, tone serious, and Steve refuses to look at him. He doesn't wanna see whatever look he's got on his face now; he couldn't stand it if it turned out to be pity. Then Bucky's breathing grows heavy, heavy enough for Steve to hear, and he says again,  _"Steve?_ " like he's not sure if he heard the first time. Like he's not sure Steve can hear him at all. 

"'m fine, Buck," he says. He keeps his head down, shifting to lean his weight against the car door. 

He thinks what he hears next is a sigh of relief, but maybe he imagines it. That kinda shit is usually too quiet for him to catch. 

"That...that happens a lot," Bucky says. 

Steve remembers now, just how lost Bucky's been since they found each other. He sounds it now--like he's trying to convince himself the thing he just said is true, cuz he can't be sure. He can't remember if it is, so he needs validation. 

Steve sighs again, rubs the heel of one palm cross his brow. "Yeah."

There's a beat. "Scared the  _shit_  outta me," Bucky says. And he says it like  _himself_  and Steve can't help it, all his air's pushed out in a shaky laugh that leaves him grinning. He swats Bucky's thigh. 

"Shuddup, I'm  _fine_ ," he says, but its more to say  _something_ than it is to make a point. Bucky grabs his arm before he can pull it away, and that makes Steve look at him. There's no pity on Bucky's face, thank god, but there is tight-lipped concern. He's looking Steve up and down, trying to make sense of him, and Steve's staring back at him, watching the way his cheeks hollow when he starts biting down on the inside. "'m fine," Steve says.

He doesn't think he can stand much more of this, all this naked emotion on Bucky's face, for him, because of  _him_. 

"If anything happen'd t'you--" Bucky says, starts to say, in a tight and ragged voice, and Steve's gotta cut him off.

"You're a sweetheart, Barnes, but pretty lines won't getcha anywhere with you lookin' like a drowned rat. Would you take us back already? I got the soap."


	8. 4th Interlude

_“Sir?”_

"Jarvis! Gimme good news, buddy." 

_“I’ve managed to find footage containing a facial match for Captain Rogers.”_

"Rea—"

"Where?"

"Well, okay, let’s see this then!"

_“It’s a 93% match, sir.”_

"Bet that missing seven present is all jaw,  _God_. He is _so_  tiny.”

"Where’s this at, a convenient store?"

_“A CVS pharmacy, 1070 Flatbush Avenue, Brooklyn, New York.”_

"Alright, le—…"

"What’s he doing."

"Did he jus—"

"Oh my god, Captain America just gave himself a five-finger discount."

"And there he goes, setting off the gate alarm."

"We got any footage of the outside?"

_"Yes, sir. Although the facial match is less than 40%, it is possible the driver is Sergeant J. Barnes.”_

"What, so they’re in cahoots? Knocking over drugstores?”

"Looked like all he took was some soap."

"He looked like he’d done this before."

"Don't joke about that; that's treason. Jarvis, when did this petty crime take place?"

_“7:34 pm.”_

“ _Shit_. You can get pretty far with a twenty minute head-start.”

_“I apologize for not bringing it to your attention sooner, but the footage has only just been transferred to the NYPD for cataloguing. The authorities are not currently in pursuit. Captain Rogers was last seen heading South-West on Henry Street at approximately 47 miles per hour, point four-one miles from Atlantic Avenue, in a champagne, 2009 Honda Civic."_

"Thor, do you think Hemmy can work with that?" 

"Aye."


	9. 8:24 pm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so for the sake of consistency, some changes have been made to previous chapters. Basically; any previous mention of the sun setting was a _lie_. The sun is setting now, here, in this chapter.
> 
> Also; no interludes for a while~ 
> 
> Also, have I thanked you for reading yet? I should do that. Y'all are awesome. Thank you so much. Here's hoping the next chapter pops up soon cuz I love writing for y'all.

Steve dozes the whole ride back. The asthma attack exhausted him and, honestly? The seat had more cushion to it than his last two mattresses combined. If they didn’t need that trip to the shower, he’d happily sleep the rest of the night away right there in the car.

And when his eyes are closed, he can pick out all the familiar notes to the scent filling the space, coming off of him and Bucky both. Its grounding, in its way. Something familiar. It reminds him of summer, when the waterline broke and they were left to stew for a week in their own juices, Bucky washing what he could at work, but always coming home smelling worse than when he’d left that morning. But there’d need to be more diesel and engine oil in the air, cuz that summer Buck’d been working at the garage. There’s none, its just dirt and  _them,_  and so eventually Steve’s mind wanders elsewhere. 

Dirt and them, like the time Bucky came home from the construction yard and bullied his way into Steve’s space, letting him know just how much he’d thought of him while he moved all that damned dirt around. “How romantic,” Steve had said. “Y’know, yer a real charmer.” 

"Like I gotta put on airs for a punk like you," Bucky’d replied. They’d talked shit while they’d stripped out of sweaty clothes, and Steve let Bucky know just how rank he was from work, just how unpleasant he was to be around, and Bucky had said there was no damn point in cleaning up if he was just planning on letting Steve make a mess on his chest anyhow. 

Still half-conscious, Steve is suddenly very aware of the jar of vaseline in his pocket, resting against his thigh. Maybe, if he can get Bucky back on track,  _definitely_ only after they’ve showered. 

He doesn’t know how many minutes pass between that thought and the next time Bucky says his name, but he opens his eyes to a dark street and Bucky leaning through the open car door to touch his shoulder. “‘m up,” he says--well, slurs. But he’s good on his word and is stepping out to the curb not a moment later. Seems Bucky wants to steady him, or maybe just touch him, what with the way he’s cupping the small of Steve’s back before he’s even finished standing. His face is hard to see—the nearest streetlight is behind him, giving his long messy hair a pink halo and doing nothing for his features—but Steve would bet money he’s looking worried. Might be better that stay in the shadows.

"C’mon, Barnes," he says, dipping to nudge him in the side before he steps out of his hands, "we don’t got all night." He doesn’t need to be led this time, he remembers which alley to turn down and reaches the fire escape before Bucky. This time, he’s getting up on his own. Jumping’s the easy part and he’s hanging from the second set of rungs in a jiffy. The pull-up, that’s another story. Steve knows he weighs next to nothing soaking wet, but its still a strain on his skinny arms to lift himself up and the effort works a groan out from between his teeth. He just about has an elbow slotted through the bars when Bucky’s hands take his hips and guild him up high enough to get a foothold. " _Bucky_ ,” he says, exasperation plain.

"…I. I was trying to—"

"I know, I know, it’s fine." He starts pulling himself up towards the landing, hand over hand.

"It doesn’t sound fine," Bucky says when he joins him up top. 

Steve slips through the window, and its pitch-black inside. “I could’ve done it myself,” he says. He starts digging in his pocket for Bucky’s lighter, but his key and sketch paper keep turning up instead.

Bucky mumbles something as he passes him--"would've taken forever" if Steve hears him right. He walks halfway across the room before he seems to realize Steve isn’t following. “…what is it?”

"Gonna make us some light, you gimme a minute," Steve says. He doesn’t hear so much as feels Bucky come back over to him, hovering until he makes up his mind, lets out a huff of air and grabs up Steve’s free hand in his own.

"We don’t got all night," Bucky says, parroting Steve back to himself, and starts guiding Steve towards the door. 

It makes Steve feel like a child again, but not in a way that hurts. He still feels foolish, hell he can feel the heat of his blush on the back of his neck, but its not anger in his belly this time, it's butterflies. 

They just didn’t do it much. Hold hands. It wasn’t how they did things, they weren’t really romantics that way. They always pushed at each other, especially in public, but still plenty in private. They tested and tempered each other’s armor. Respected that armor, left it on ‘til it was well worn. And it was probably more for Steve’s benefit than anything else. Bucky knew he hated coddling, so instead he made digs, and him trusting Steve to withstand them was its own kind of love.

But Steve would be a liar and a hypocrite if he didn’t admit that deep down, he loved it when Bucky was sweet on him.

There’d been a time where that’s all he ever wanted, when he was desperate for Bucky to be his fella, even though they both had girls they liked, and so many girls liked Bucky, and being sweethearts would only make their shitty lives even harder. Steve hadn't cared. He’d been lovesick. He’d been 14. And when Bucky’s sweet, he goes back to that place and feels young and foolish and so head-over-heels it’s embarrassing. 

And he never says a word, but he’s sure Bucky knows what he does to him.

Or knew. 

Every step Bucky takes is sure, not at all like someone picking their way through the dark. “Just how can you see where you're goin’?” Steve asks.

The question seems to surprise him and Bucky stills for a minute. Finally he goes, “…just can,” like he’d never considered it before, like he couldn’t quite grasp why Steve would even wonder. Steve  _does_  wonder, but he’s wondered over a lot of things today and is now quite accustomed to pushing his questions down aways from his tongue.

Bucky falls quiet again without Steve’s prompting and Steve doesn’t know what’s going on in his head anymore. Before? He’d probably be just as quiet, but he’d also be trying to hide a shit-eating grin, because they’d be in a game of chicken where whoever says the sappy shit first loses. Steve usually lost, but it was worth it every time he chose his words carefully and got Bucky to blush. He doesn’t know what to say now. 

No, no wait, he does.

“‘m glad you found me.”

They’ve made it to the stairs when he says it and Bucky places his weight down the first step and stops. Steve squeezes his hand, his left in Bucky’s right, and after a beat, Buck squeezes back. 

"Me too," he says. There’s something about the darkness that makes it more intimate. Steve tries to cling to that thought and ignore all his questions, so many damn questions. He wishes it were that easy to clear his head, but he ain’t a dame from a dimestore paperback. His fondness for Bucky can’t make the world and all its problems fall away. He should know; he's spent so many years trying.


	10. 8:35 pm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Casual reminder that you can always [follow me on tumblr](http://www.bluandorange.tumblr.com) if you want to see each chapter come together piece by piece. Either way you're great and I thank you sincerely for being here <3 I've got something special for y'all this chapter

"Lose everything but the pants," he tells Bucky once the door’s open and the lights are on. He had the fixings of a plan in mind since setting out for the drugstore and he starts right on in with singular focus once they're back in that basement apartment. He doesn't wait to see if Buck'll listen, he ain't got the time, he'll get things started with or without him, so long as they're  _started_. This, at least, Steve can control. 

Since he doesn’t trust any hot water to find its way outta those pipes, Steve sets about making some with the use of the electric stove. It’s a queer contraption—two stove-top burners set into what’s practically a metal two-by-four what plugs into the wall—but it’s got dials like a proper stove, so it doesn’t look like it’ll give him much trouble. Trouble finds him in the next step; the one pot he finds in the cupboard's been stained with more than just water, and Steve swears under his breath. Damn thing needs cleaning, or else he'll be pouring soup stock down Bucky's neck.

"Nevermind," he says, turning back Bucky’s way with the pot tipped for him to see the crusting whats at the bottom and all up one side, "y’can keep your shirt—"

He fumbles the pot and it falls to the ground and Steve just about thinks he’ll fall with it. He steps back until the counter hits him in the bruise Bucky’s manhandling formed below his shoulder blades, and he presses his weight there to stay upright. The pain grounds him.

He doesn’t know what he’s looking at. He can’t be seeing what his brain’s telling him, that’s crazy, that’s  _crazy_. 

All that metal, his brain goes back and forth over—he’s wearing armor, it’s his arm, its a sleeve, it’s his  _arm_ —but what he can’t begin to reconcile is the crescent of scarring cutting across the left pectoral, framing the chrome, inlaid,  _attached_. They’re old scars, faded to just a hair darker and redder than the healthy skin around it, too old to be a month in, far too old…

"Bucky?" he asks, because he doesn’t know what else to say. Bucky looks back at him, expression neutral, maybe bordering on mild surprise. Surprised by what, Steve’s reaction? Anxiety jolts through him—seeing everything wrong, you’re  _crazy_ , its not  _true, you're cracking up, Rogers_ —and Steve’s closing the distance between them with his next breath, to make certain with his hands what he can’t trust his eyes to  _know_.

His fingers feel pockmarked scars and metal. Steve’s breath comes out ragged and his face contorts because no,  _no_. He looks up to find Bucky’s eyes and asks, “this  _real_?” His palm lays over Bucky’s heart he can  _feel_  it beating steady, maybe even a little fast, knows that must be real, Bucky must be real, but the rest—

Bucky’s brow creases and he ducks Steve’s eyes as he turns the question over—slowly, so fucking slowly—before saying, “yes.”

"This," Steve says. He pats the edge of the metal, then grabs the bicep, feeling each groove press into his palm as he tries to shake it and nothing gives. "This is real? This—Bucky, it’s  _metal_.” 

"Yes," Bucky says. He still won't meet Steve's eyes and he looks worried—not concerned, not embarrassed, just worried, like he might not be giving the right answer. 

Steve blinks, steps back, blinks again, blinks  _hard_ , and opens his eyes and nothing’s changed. It’s still Bucky, stripped to the waist, left arm silver and scaled like a robot’s from a science fiction picture. That’s not it, though. That’s not it, there’s other changes, maybe only things Steve would notice but he  _does_ , because there isn’t an inch of Bucky he hasn’t committed to memory, not one plane he hasn’t tried his hand at transferring to paper. Bucky’s grown broader, shoulders thicker and chest wider than any work at the ship yard could afford him. The lean, wiry muscles Steve's spent hours trying to capture in graphite have doubled in width, growing thick and straining the thin skin stretched across them cuz Goddamn it doesn’t look like Bucky’s seen a decent meal in ages. More than a month. _  
_

None of this could’ve happened in a _month_. 

"What happened to you?" Steve asks. 

The next few moments are like watching an avalanche. The build is slow, Steve's choked words having to traverse whatever fog's built up in Bucky's mind before they hit and register. Then Bucky's eyelids start to flutter and he takes in a slow breath through his mouth before he shuts it, sucks down on his own teeth in a way that wrinkles the dimple of his chin and tightens the muscles of his jaw. And his expression just crumbles in on itself from there until he's ducked his head so far forward, his face is obscured by hair and all Steve can see is the crown of his head and the shaking of his shoulders.

Steve doesn't think, just steps back in, already reaching up a hand to brush back his hair when Bucky croaks out, "I don't know." He lifts his head just enough to look at Steve, eyes wide and pleading, looking for answers, and repeats in a whisper, "I don't  _know_." Steve wishes he _had_ the answer, wishes he could tell Bucky, wishes he knew himself how it all went wrong, but he doesn't. He has to improvise. 

Steve brushes the hair back from Bucky's forehead and pulls him down by the neck until his lips can reach his temple, mumbling, "shh, 's okay, 's okay," into his clammy skin. Bucky whimpers, Steve replies with another "'s okay" and another kiss, lower, again and again until he's murmuring "it's alright," and "I've gotchu" right against his mouth. Bucky grips his waist, too hard,  _too hard_  in ways that will bruise down through the muscle right to the bone, but he lets up when Steve makes a pained sound and he's just holding him after that. Just got his palms set on each hip and Steve thinks, well, his stomach was hurting anyways--from fear and anxiety--what difference does it make? Bruises heal.

He goes right back to kissing, to reassuring until Bucky's kissing back, and the noises die down and slowly, slowly the shaking stops and Bucky sits on the bed, bent to press his forehead against Steve's sternum as Steve continues to pet through his hair. 

Seconds pass, minutes pass, and Steve doesn't know what to say so he keeps his mouth shut. He's in over his head and he knows it. He's been in over his head all damn day and it feels like he's only sinking deeper as time goes on. He's down the Rabbit Hole. He wishes he knew what he was 'sposed to be following. He wishes he knew a lot of things.

What he does know is he can't crack, not with Bucky like this. Not when Bucky needs him, is counting on him. They're both fumbling in the dark here, but Steve still has his footing. Steve, at least, can remain upright. For once, he'll have to be the one shouldering them through, and he won't back down from that. He  _won't_  fail Bucky now. 

His thoughts begin to derail as Bucky shifts and his hands drag from around Steve's waist to take him by the shirt front. Steve leans back far enough to watch as, slowly, Bucky untucks his shirt and pushes it and the singlet beneath it up to Steve's ribs. "Bucky?" Steve says, unsure and uneasy at the deep concentration Bucky's leveling just above his navel. 

Two fingers, flesh (thankfully), are set against his stomach. "I shot you," Bucky says, voice cracking. "Here."

Steve looks down and all he sees is the dark red hand prints Bucky left on each hip. That and the fingers, and the part he'd been able to form in Bucky's unruly, dirty hair.

"'s news to me," Steve says. "Must not've took. Bucky." He repeats his name until he can get him to meet his eyes again. "I'm fine." Steve pushes his bangs back, tucks them behind Buck's ears, moves to cup his cheeks. "Lemme take care of you, now, arright?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art's been added to chapter 7, too. I hope y'all like it <3 Thanks again


	11. 5th Interlude

"So, what’s our play when we find him. If he’s with Barnes—"

"Yeah, I’d like to know why that is, exactly—"

"Tony—"

"No, no, this guy’s—you said this guy’s ‘sposed to be set on killing him, that’s his mission, not…taking him out on beer runs. Soap runs. Whatever."

"It’s  _possible_  he’s starting to remember…” 

"Steve  _was_  convinced Barnes fished him out of the Potomic. After the helicarriers fell—he said he couldn’t’ve gotten to shore on his own.”

"The site was compromised before we could follow up on that—any trace Barnes _may've_ left behind had been trampled by the civvies that found Steve, and then by the EMTs."

"But it’s possible."

"It doesn’t mean he’s stable."

"But has our Captain not returned to the state most familiar to his friend?"

"Does that mean this partnership of theirs will go sour when Cap’s back to his old super soldier self?"

"...Perhaps."

"Barnes is a weapon. He’s been a weapon for longer than he and Steve have known each other. He’s a loaded gun and anything could set him off. Steve isn’t safe around him. He won't be until Barnes is deprogrammed." 

"So we’re still going after them. Arright. What’s our play?"


	12. 8:51 pm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for waiting, y'all. This chapter's one of the longer ones but it was a jerk to write.

"Lemme take care of you, now,” Steve had said. And Bucky’d squinted at him and looked for all the world like he wanted to protest, and that, that had gotten Steve to smile. Steve hadn’t given him any room to argue, had bullied him into laying down to wait, there, on the bed, but the fact Bucky wanted to tell him off was a relief. His bastard of a friend was still in there, somewhere, if buried under layers of shit hair.

Steve strips his singlet off and sits on the crapper to work the grime off the inside of the pot, his undershirt a make-shift rag and his shirt front left hanging open. It takes a heaping helping of elbow grease, but the work keeps the basement’s chill out of his bones.

God, though, but it was quiet. He does hate that. His kingdom for a radio, or Bucky’s easy chatter, or a change in his own inclination, were he a natural born talker, so he could fill the silence himself. But a radio would prob’bly be less than useless in this concrete box, and Bucky only seemed to speak when spoken to, and Steve always struggled at starting small-talk.

So he works in silence. The whole place smells of pine when he’s finished, curtesy of the stolen soap—which makes him think it must be green, even if all he sees is pale blue—and his arms ache and ache more when he’s filled the pot with water and is carrying it over to the burner. He leaves it there to boil, heat set on high because he’s impatient, and crosses the room to practically flop across Bucky’s chest. 

"Oof," says Bucky. Then, "yer heavier than y’look."

"Not moving," Steve says, "not ‘til that water’s done, anyhow." His instinct is to place his head on Bucky’s left shoulder, right over the heart, but he balks at the sight of the metal plating and turns his head at the last second. If Bucky notices, he doesn’t say.

Bucky’s bodys as warm as ever, firmer with the added muscle, maybe, but so achingly familiar that Steve can’t help but let his tension drain away. He’s got his skinny arms slotted on either side of Buck’s ribs, damp hands soaking the bed sheet, and the rest of him draped right down his front. With Steve’s shirt open the way it is, they’re sternum to sternum, skin to skin, and he’s quite content to keep it that way.

He’s quite content to never move again, to never let  _Bucky_  move again. It’s been a long day and he feels just how long right in his bones every time he stops to catch his breath.

Too bad Bucky still stinks. 

Steve can’t lay here all night. There’s still work to do. He allots himself a whole minute where he is, then takes in a deep breath—smelling something like an electrical fire clinging to Bucky’s hair—and sits up on his elbows. Bucky’s eyes pop open—he’d closed ‘em? Ain’t that sweet—to sweep over his face. 

"Y’said you wouldn’ move," Bucky mumbles. He actually looks  _disappointed_. The urge to tease him for it is just too strong. Steve cocks his head to the side, chin tucked and shoulders canting inward, imitating the shy way fairies hold themselves when flirting with their fellas. He even bats his lashes.

"What, y’miss me already?" 

Bucky doesn’t take the bait. He ponders over the question like its honest to God important, and Steve drops the act. What was he thinking? He should’ve known better. “If I get comfortable,” Steve says, taking pity, being direct, “I’ll never get up again.” 

Bucky nods his understanding. There’s a beat, then he’s running his hands up Steve’s sides, like he tends to do right before Steve’s gotta get off him. One last touch. Before, though he didn’t look nearly so curious. Now he watches his own hands slide up like its the first time he's ever fitted them against Steve's sides and Steve’s sides have started to grow tender and Steve squirms just a hair, unable to completely bite back the urge to pull away. Bucky notices.

"You’re hurt," Bucky says.

"You’ve got a hellova grip," Steve says.

Steve sits back, straddling Bucky’s waist as Bucky parts the two halves of Steve’s dress shirt to inspect his hips. He gets in maybe a second long gander before Steve’s up and off the bed. “I’m fine,” Steve says. He’s just up to check the water, is all, and is not hiding a damn thing when he starts buttoning up his shirt front. Basement’s chilly. He’s gotta be careful about those cold temperatures. 

There’s bubbles forming at the bottom of the pot, which is good enough for Steve. With care not to scald himself, be it with heated water or heated metal, he picks the pot up off the burner and carries it the two steps required to set it beside the crapper. Once it’s on the floor, he snaps his fingers in Bucky’s direction and points to the seat in front of him, the only seat in the house. 

Earlier, when he’d gone through the cabinets, Steve’d come across a chipped coffee mug. Once Bucky’s sat in front of him, he takes that mug and dips it into the hot water until it’s about half full. 

“‘s gonna be hot,” he warns the back of Bucky’s head. There’s no reaction. “Okay,” Steve says, and pours the water over the crown of his friend's hair. There's no reaction. Not a flinch, not a curse, Steve has to touch his back before he’s even sure Buck’s still  _breathing_. “Hey,” he says. “You okay?”

"Yes," Bucky says after a pause. "…it was hot." 

It’s about the most unnatural response he’s gotten all evening, and that’s saying something. Steve pushes through, says, “yupp,” and refills the mug. “Here comes more.”

This time he  _thinks_  he sees Bucky’s shoulders ease when the water runs down them. May just be his imagination.

"Still hot," Bucky says. At least he’s clued in on Steve wanting communication. Steve ‘hmms’ in response and starts threading his fingers into the rats nest whats become of Bucky’s hair, checking and finding it decently soaked through. He rakes Buck’s bangs away from his face, dislodges the strands stuck to his hollow cheeks and tries to herd the whole mess of it back behind his ears; a thick, dark mass heavy with water, knotted and lumpy and promising to be a hassle.

Steve decides to state the obvious; “This is gonna take a while.”

It does.

Steve rubs soap into finger-thick clumps of hair at a time, starting with Bucky’s bangs and moving his way backward. 

"When was the last time you washed this," he asks, half mumbling, mostly to himself. 

"I don’t know," Bucky says. 

"When’s the last time you cut it?" Steve asks. He knows what the answer should be;  _"You gave me a trim the night before I left."_

Bucky doesn’t say that, he says, “I don’t know,” and he says it quietly, because Steve thinks Bucky realizes he  _should_  know and its a problem that he doesn’t. Steve also thinks Steve doesn’t want a repeat performance of Bucky coming apart at the seams, so he runs his free hand over his flesh-and-blood shoulder, gives it a squeeze.

“‘s okay,” Steve says. “Its okay, fergiddit.” 

Bucky doesn’t reply, he turns and looks down at that bony hand resting on him, skin to skin, Steve's paler by comparison, but not by much. Not by much at all, and that’s another change, Bucky being so pale. Bucky’s cheek is right there and now Steve’s found something new to worry over, so he doesn’t hesitate, he just lifts his hand and thumbs that shallow cheek with sincere affection. Bucky ‘hmm’s or maybe just hums before giving the back of Steve’s fingers a light kiss. 

"Cute," Steve says. 

"Yer the cute one," Bucky mumbles into Steve’s knuckles. It would be standard fair, but the tone’s all wrong. Not quite sleepy, but not all there, either. Dazed. Going through the motions. 

Steve traces the line of Bucky’s cheekbone one more time, then sets back to work. 

The quiet sinks in again and has made itself quite comfortable by the time Steve's reaching back down for that cup. He wets Bucky's hair just enough to work the soap into a decent lather. He thinks, and he noticed this when he was cleaning the pot, that the soap's gotta have some kind of lotion to it, because it strips the dirt and the natural oils from the hair, but doesn't leave it so dry its brittle. Least he can say he stole some of the good stuff.

Cleaning its just part of the work, though, and Steve's gotta finger comb and tease apart knots he'd much rather just cut out and be done with, he just lacks the means to. He wants to get to that scalp. This was never  _just_  about Bucky's hygiene. 

Steve's only met one man what had a lobotomy, but he's been terrified that now he's met two. 

He's heard that some places, some doctors, swear by lobotomies. They swear the process is improving all the time. Steve thinks you should stay the hell out of a man's brain, sick or not. He's seen one botched attempt, and that's one more than needed. People should know its not something you _risk_.

He still can't feel any scar tissue, any stitches. That moment--where he's hit something tender and Bucky jerks away like a frightened animal reminded of a moment of trauma, of pain--it never comes. Bucky sits still and eventually Steve just has to accept there's nothing here to find. 

Its not that he  _wanted_  to find something, it just. It was the most logical explanation. 

Steve frowns at himself. Right. Logical. Because today has been  _so fucking logical_.

"All done," he says. "You can do the rest, right?" 

"The rest?" Bucky asks, turning to look at him over his metal shoulder. 

"Yeah, washing up the rest. The rest of  _you_."

"Oh," Bucky says. He nods, stands, starts to unbuckle his pants. 

The soap's gone warm right to the center so its easy for Steve to dig his fingers in until he can work it into halves. He hands one piece to Bucky, saying, "We'll jus' share whats left of this," meaning the warm water in the soup pot. He starts unbuttoning his own shirt again, though unlike Bucky he folds it and sets it on the counter, because unlike Bucky, Steve's clothes are salvageable.

When he turns around, Bucky's staring at the bruises on his waist.

"I've had worse," Steve says. He doesn't look down at them, doesn't need to, to know they ache and the place where his body should be soft, pliable, built to twist, it's all gone stiff--but he doesn't care. He looks Bucky in the eyes and dares him to say Steve's said wrong, to call him a liar, to call him a moron with a death wish. 

Bucky doesn't say anything, just furrows his brow and looks lost in thought and stares at the imprints of his own fingers on Steve's skin.


	13. 6th Interlude

"Separating Steve from Barnes has to be priority."

"Right, well. This guy's the Winter Soldier. That's gonna be easier said than done."

"Rendering him unconscious would be ideal; barring that, restraining him somehow. His training, his superhuman abilities, they'll all be factors, but its the arm that's going to be tricky."

"Arm--like the metal one?"

"Yeah--she's right, that arm's brutal. Ripped one'a my wings off like it was paper mache."

"That's fine; nothing a little ol' fasioned EMP can't fix."

"I tried that; he shrugged it off and then he shot me in the shoulder."

"...Okay, less old fashioned, more new fashioned and not shitty." 

"What is an Eee-Em-Pee?"

"Electrical magnetic pulse; its--"

"Controlled lightning bursts aimed at gizmos."

"Then surely he will be no match."

"Uh, no offense, none meant, like at  _all_ , but the likelihood of this all going down right in front of Steve--who kinda thinks he's in '45 or whatever--is pretty high. Gods calling down lightning strikes to take out his friend may be a bit...much."

"It could also kill him."

"That too."

"I'm getting mixed signals here; do we want to save Cap from this guy or not?"

"We do, no, we do--jus'...well, lets just say, when he's back to his old self,  _I_  wouldn't want to be the guy t'tell him I barbecued his life-long, childhood friend. Brainwashed assassin training or no."

"This is indeed a delicate matter. My methods are not delicate."

"Right, no...which, really, is fine. It is; I'll take the baton, EMPs I can do. EMP, geared at restraint, non-lethal, just gimme an hour. If we have some news before then, I will be both shocked and awed."


	14. 9:38 pm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WE CLIMBED THIS WHOLE MOUNTAIN
> 
> which is to say there is porn in this chapter
> 
> I haven't updated in forever because there is 3000 words of porn in this chapter

Steve hands his singlet-turned-make-shift-wash-cloth over to Bucky.  _That_  he doesn’t put up a fuss about, but Buck takes one long look at the soup pot, another look at Steve, turns his back on both and steps up to the shower. “‘s yours,” he says, and that’s just like him. Taking all the cold water for himself, leaving Steve with the warm. Its just like him, and Steve’s stripped to his birthday suit, already shivering, so maybe he’s having a hard time finding the will to argue.

They both get to washing, Steve knelt over his water and Bucky under the shower-head, receiving his in a cold spray. Steve keeps looking Bucky’s way, expecting to see him shifting foot to foot, cursing and muttering about losing choice bits to frostbite, but every movement Bucky makes is measured and whatever his thoughts are, he doesn’t share them. Bucky’s expression has turned distant, vacant. It doesn’t look like he’s feeling the water at all.

Every time Steve stops to stare, he returns to the pot to find his water cooled by another degree, and the pace of his scrubbing becomes faster to compensate. He’s just about ready to call it ‘good’ and go pat himself dry with the edge of the bed sheet when the wall explodes. 

Well, no, ‘explodes’ is not the word for it. It doesn’t ‘explode’. When Steve looks up past his own arm, raised protectively over his face, he realizes what he’d mistook for an explosion was in fact Bucky’s metal hand going  _through_ the wall, right up past the wrist. 

"Hey," Steve says. "Hey, hey, hey,  _what_.” 

Bucky doesn’t seem to hear him. He’s panting, shivering, his eyes unfocused, and when Steve steps closers he realizes Bucky has his metal hand open, palm up, fingers digging into the concrete, the  _fucking_  concrete. “Bucky,” Steve says, and Bucky jerks, sucks in a harsh breath through his nose, mouth set in a tight frown, and doesn’t look at Steve or retract his hand. If anything, he grips harder. 

Steve starts turning the shower off, looking over his shoulder at Bucky the whole time. “Bucky,” Steve repeats, and he’s so close to that left arm of his, his breath’s fogging up the chrome. “Bucky,  _hey.”_

There’s a crunch and whirring Steve only hears because he’s so damn close to the source, as Bucky’s hand closes another inch. He ducks under the metal arm once the water’s only a dribble, his prune-y fingers taking Bucky’s face. 

"Bucky, lookit me, ‘s okay," Steve says, but Bucky keeps looking past him, eyes too muzzy to be seeing the wall, fuck, what Steve wouldn’t give to know  _what_  he was  _seeing_ _, “_ Bucky,” Steve says, “baby, come back t’me.  _Bucky_. Talk to me, Bucky, what is it?” 

Bucky’s eyelids flutter, and he never really blinks, but Steve can see his words starting to register in his eyes, sees them come into focus, recognizing him just a second before Bucky shivers out one word; “cold.”

"Cold?" Steve repeats. Well, he’d been wrong about Bucky not feeling nothing. "Okay. Okay, we can do somethin’ about that. We can fix that." He drops his hands to Bucky’s shoulders, first trying to rub heat into them, then into Bucky’s chest and sides. "We’ll getchu warmed up. Jus’. Take your hand outta the wall."

Bucky stares at him until Steve indicates the metal arm with the jerk of his chin. Bucky eyes shift an inch and he looks at the arm like he’d entirely forgotten it was attached to him in the first place. The lapse in awareness seems to bother him about as much as it should. He steps back, not so much removing the hand as pulling it free, with that wide-eyed terror look Steve’s already seen too much of tonight. He’s about seen his fill of it for a lifetime.

“‘s okay,” Steve says. Its not, but he can justify that it  _will_  be, that he’ll see to it personally. He takes that metal hand by the wrist and starts brushing the debris off as he says, “‘s okay, Buck, we’ll get you warmed up.” He pronounces each word clearly, trying to draw Bucky’s focus to them and their meaning. It seems to work; Bucky lowers his arm and gives Steve a small, shaky nod. Steve returns it, says, “Okay,” before he takes Bucky’s shoulders and a small step to the side, telegraphing his intentions. “You wait right here.” 

Steve leaves him, hurrying back over to check the temperature of the pot. Luke-warm at best, but better than nothing. Might take the edge off the chill. He’s got his hands around the handles when Bucky takes him by the waist and pulls him close, back to front, face buried against Steve’s shoulder. 

"Bucky," Steve says. He can feel him trembling, curled tightly over him to fit them together, to not leave so much as a breath of space between. His need is stark and clear, and familiar, its just usually they’d be curled in bed before Bucky held him this tightly. Now, like then, he holds him like he’s afraid Steve’s gonna up and disappear any minute now, like he could be taken away. Now, like then, Steve presses into that need, meets it head on, fits his arms over Bucky’s and says without words that he knows, and he’s here, and he’s not going anywhere any time soon. 

The chill of the shower burns off Bucky quick, ‘til he’s a hot stone pressed to Steve’s back, sturdy and still once they’ve shifted and found a more comfortable way to stand. Cold water drips from his hair and down over the sharp blades of Steve’s shoulders. He’s still bent over Steve, taking so much of his weight, he might as well be lifting him, which works, what with the way Steve’s knees have started knocking together. Steve’s legs are freezing, but everything north of his thighs is flush with the heat Bucky’s giving off. Everything but perhaps the shoulder hitting metal, but Steve ignores that. He can’t let himself dwell.

"This better?" Steve asks, after a minute. Bucky replies by fitting a kiss to the back of Steve’s neck. Steve knows what to expect next, turns to meet his lips once Bucky’s done kissing his way up over his neck, ear and cheek to finally settle on Steve’s mouth. They kiss slow, like they’ve got all the time in the world.

It’d be sweet, if not for the whiskers. Those scratch against Steve’s lips and cheeks, giving a bite to the kiss it wasn’t needing. In the back of his mind, Steve tries to calculate just how long he’ll be stuck with Bucky’s fucking whisker burn all over his mug. If people weren’t already pegging him for a nelly, they’d damn well know him for one after this. He’s gonna let Bucky know just how much he owes Steve, once he’s through being certifiable. The things he does for the man…

And it’s goddamn cold in this basement. Steve’s still wet in some places and certainly damp everywhere else. The shivers are starting to set in and its no fun kissing when your teeth want to chatter. And when he can feel Bucky growing hard across the flank of his keister, they’ve officially been standing around too long. Steve breaks away, ignores the indignant whine Barnes gives at the interruption, and says, “bed,” before stepping out of Bucky's arms all together. Steve almost crosses right to it, himself, before thinking better of it and doubling back to swipe the jar of vaseline off the counter first. No idea if they’ll need it, no reason to have to walk all the way across the damn room if they should. 

Bucky’s gotten under the bed covers already and pulls Steve in the second he’s within reach. Steve sets the jar on the floor before he slides in beneath him. He grins up at Bucky. Bucky stares down at him, eyes alive and roaming all over Steve, and expression expectant. He’s drinking Steve in, in a way he hasn’t done in years, and Steve suddenly feels self-consciousness tighten his throat. Sure, he knows Bucky wants him, but its not like he’s never seen Steve out of slacks before. He’s not sure this intensity is warranted. He’s really not much to look at.

Steve swallows the butterflies back down. “Should’a known this would be your idea of ‘getting warm’,” he says, wrapping his arms around Bucky’s miss-matched shoulders. Bucky seems to clue in at his tone, and lowers himself onto his elbows, and they’re flush from sternum to hip. Steve shifts, dragging himself over Bucky’s half-hard johnson. Bucky’s face falls into the crook of his neck and he groans. “You damned wolf,” Steve says. 

"Punk," Bucky says, and starts kissing at his throat. 

They rut slow against the curve of each other’s hips. Steve’s not surprised when Bucky’s gone hard in no time at all, while he’s just barely made it to half-mast. Steve’s always been slow to rise and then embarrassingly fast to pop. His weak little body never did anything right, but Bucky always did right by him. He always made sure Steve had a good time, whether he came for Bucky or not. 

And Steve loved taking care of Bucky. 

He loved having his undivided attention. He loved having an excuse to touch and hold and grope, because Steve  _needed_  to, deep down. Most all the time,  _wanted_  to touch him, and he couldn’t. It wasn’t right. Because they were in public, or Bucky was with some doll, or it was just them,  _but they weren’t like that_ , they didn’t dote on each other like sweethearts, they still had their armor. When they fucked, though, then was different. Then was okay. His hands could go anywhere, everywhere. For that moment, Bucky was  _his_.

Look, Steve knows he’s no one’s idea of a catch. There’s a reason he never tries to stop Bucky from chasing skirts. He knows he ain’t enough—he’s barely anything at all, and that’s fine. He ain’t gonna admit it, but he knows, and its fine. He’s over it. 

Because here’s the thing; Steve gets to have Bucky anyways. And he tries his damnedest to be worth the attention when he gets it, he soaks up every ounce of it like a sponge. He takes Bucky in and maybe pretends for a moment or two that he’s got no reason to ever give him back. 

Steve can feel his own pulse just about everywhere now, especially in his lips and any other patch of skin rubbed raw by Bucky’s damn beard. He can feel Bucky’s pulse beating in his neck when he kisses it and Steve sucks a hickey over where the pulse is strongest, mouth working in time with the beat. He can feel Bucky’s pulse in his cock, against Steve’s belly and then in the palm of Steve’s hand. He works Buck slowly and watches him chew at his own lips to keep in his moans. 

"How y’want me?" Steve asks. He doesn’t stop his stroking, hell, he gives the head of Bucky’s cock a good swipe just as he looks about to reply. Bucky can’t keep in his moan, then, and Steve’s sure he must look mighty satisfied with himself. He drags his fingers of his free hand through the wet clumps of Bucky’s hair, strokes across the back of his neck and meets his half-hearted glare with a smug little smile.

"In you," Bucky says. 

Steve’s dick twitches at the idea. “‘s gonna take time,” Steve warns. He’s a little breathless now. He wants it too, God, he probably wants it more than he should. 

"Good," Bucky says, red lips spreading into a toothy grin. Steve smirks back. He starts squirming toward the edge of the bed, to get far enough over to reach that jar, but Bucky swipes it up first. Seeing it in his hands makes Steve realize that, tonight, he wants to open himself up. So he pries the jar away. 

"You keep a close eye on me, now," Steve says. He twists the top off the jar, and then twists onto his side, taking the position he’s most used to working in. Only his sides are bruised and when he tries to hike his leg up look back at himself, the ache is sudden and hard and solid, completely unyielding. Steve grunts, eyes snapping shut. He returns to how he was, on his back, staying still, breathing even, and focuses on riding out the pain.

Above him, he hears Bucky’s breath stick. “Steve,” he says. Steve shakes his head; he doesn’t want to hear it. Bucky starts pressing soft, apologetic kisses across Steve’s collarbone, down a couple ribs. “Sorry,” he whispers into his skin. Steve doesn’t want to hear it.

"Lift those up for me, would’ya," Steve says, absently motioning at his own legs. Bucky drags his hands down them before complying. The bite of those metal fingers on Steve’s still-damp skin makes him shiver. Once each knee is hooked over one of Bucky’s shoulders, Steve sets the vaseline to the side, dips his fingers in and pulls up a dollop he transfers to the palm of the other hand.  

The first time they did this—the first time Bucky did Steve—they hadn’t used much more than spit to get him open. Steve had been too sauced to feel much of it at the time, but there’d been no question about the lack of prep come morning. His ass was raw, so raw it’d hurt for a week, and ached another week after that. The way Bucky tells it, Steve had been so damn insistent, he couldn’t  _get_  much done before Steve was demanding they get on with it. The way Steve sees it, they were _both_  dumb and plastered and too enthusiastic for their own good. Maybe a little more than enthusiastic in his case. Okay,  _especially_ in his case. He doesn’t doubt he was being stubborn and making demands. All in all, not his most shining moment. 

Now, now he knows his fingers will be sure, movements practiced, guided by years of experience. Bucky fits one large hand against Steve’s right cheek and shifts it to the side for him, giving Steve more room to work. “You watchin’?” Steve asks, hooking the first finger in and pulling slow until the taunt muscle starts to give. 

"Yeah," Bucky says. He’s wearing that goddamn smirk that drives Steve crazy—lips quirked higher on one side, with just a hint of teeth. The things it does to the shape of that bastard’s bottom lip… Bucky’s hand slides up and starts palming him, trying to get Steve’s prick back to attention. The hitch in Steve’s side had knocked him back to square one, forced him soft, and he’s no idea if he’ll finish tonight, but Bucky’s hand feels  _good_  and Bucky’s finally acting like  _himself_  and Steve lets his head lilt to one side, breathing out heavy and slow. 

Steve gives himself over to the feeling and his mind goes blessedly blank. All the day’s struggling, all the stress, it bleeds away to the push and pull of his own fingers inside him, of Bucky’s hands and mouth and body pressed in over and around him. They kiss and groan, murmur quips and each other’s names into skin, against mouths. Bucky’s got his lips fixed around Steve’s earlobe when Steve flexes his fingers up and pleasure sharp and sudden makes him moan outright. Bucky takes him by the dick again, jerks him slow and makes him squirm, nerves suddenly alight and sensitive. Steve whimpers, Bucky licks a stripe from his neck to his ear and snickers. 

Steve opens his eyes to glare at him—the hell is so funny?—just as Bucky dips a finger into the vaseline slicked across Steve’s palm. “You jus’ about finished down there?” Bucky asks. He smirks at Steve, holds his eyes as he thumbs down the inside of his hip, past his sack and over the back of Steve’s own knuckles right before he presses that thick finger of his in, all the way in. Steve gasps. “Now, where is that…” Bucky’s tone is almost conversational as he swirls his finger around, prods at Steve until he finds the place that gets his breath to catch in his throat. “Mmm, here? ‘s it here?” He flicks his finger again and Steve chokes back a moan to nod. Bucky ducks down to mouth at Steve’s jaw, not relenting with that damn finger until he finally works a high note from between Steve’s teeth. He kisses up to Steve’s mouth and Steve swallows him hungrily. “Can I—” Bucky starts.

“ _Yeah_ ,” Steve says. They pull their fingers free and Bucky grabs at Steve’s wrist, guides his slick left palm down, and he works the rest of the lube over Bucky’s aching prick. They kiss again as he adjusts, as Bucky coaxes Steve to guide him in, still holding his wrist, the cool, smooth metal hand pushing up his ass and hooking a thumb into him to keep him open. Steve grips Bucky’s shoulder—metal—and watches Bucky scrunch his face up tight as he starts sinking in. Steve’s body yields and Bucky’s plum bent him in half by the time he’s seated. “Go slow,” Steve says, voice pitched and breathy in ways he’s never liked, but knows gets something in Bucky hot and bothered. Bucky groans and nods and when he starts straightening his back, pulling out, he does it slow. 

To be honest, this is always Steve’s least favorite part. The damn wait while he gets used to Buck being inside him, where Bucky has to be gentle until the tearing feeling falls away and Steve’s left with the pleasure and heat, and he too can start making stupid faces and forget about what his body’s doing and just  _feel_  it for a while. This is always the part where Steve’s  _the most_  aware of his body. Too fragile and too small, and now, tonight, aching in so many places. 

Bucky gasps in to Steve’s mouth, ready to be gone, holding on by a thread just for Steve’s sake, moving slow for him, kissing him to draw his mind away because Lord knows if Steve lays here  _thinking_  he’ll never taste oblivion, he’ll never be able to give himself over. Steve kisses back, fingers dragging over the hard muscles shifting under Bucky’s skin. He scrapes his nails up the back of Bucky’s neck, he grabs a fist full of hair in each hand and shifts down, licking into Bucky’s mouth as he cants his hips and slips Bucky's cock in another inch further, and Bucky shifts upward to meet the motion of his hips and bottoms out with a heady moan.

"Slow," Steve reminds him. Bucky makes an indignant noise, jerks his hips back just to spite him and Steve laughs around the sharp pain. He comes back in slow, though, and the pace resumes, and Steve waits for the give and  _sighs_  when finally it starts to happen. He pushes up on one elbow and begins meeting Bucky in the middle, starts shifting and angling his hips and—" _Oh_.” 

"Yeah?" Bucky says. 

"Yeah," Steve says, "Right there. Fuckin— _right_ there.” 

Braced by that metal hand, Bucky lifts Steve by the small of his back and keeps him steady as he moves in earnest, teasing that spot inside him for a few thrusts before hitting it dead on. Steve goes boneless at the shock. 

“ _Fuck_ , Bucky,  _yes.”_

He could probably knock Steve over the edge right then and there, but Bucky ain’t a gentleman like that, and just cuz he always sees to it that Steve has a good time, that don’t mean he doesn’t play with him a while first. He drops Steve flat again and when Steve tries to protest, he shoves a metal finger between his lips. Steve glares at him as he sucks it down, tasting copper and dust and the faintest hint of electricity. Steve hits one side of Bucky’s head with his knee. Bucky turns and mouths at it playfully in reply, scraping his teeth against the side of his knee-cap. Steve spits out the finger. 

"Stop being an ass," Steve says. 

Bucky chuckles, returns to rolling his hips. Every movement Bucky makes strikes at least a hint of pleasure down Steve’s spine, and the build starts in him again. Bucky sucks bruises across Steve’s collar bone and Steve scrapes his nails across Bucky’s back. Steve pushes Bucky’s hair back, revealing his ear, pulls him down by the neck so he can nibble at the lobe and feel Bucky pant hot and heavy into his throat. 

"Steve," Bucky says. Sounds like he’s close. Steve nods, lets the needy sound escape his lips, because maybe he could, maybe they could, if Bucky times it right. Steve digs both of his hands into the sheets and lets Bucky take his back again, lets him arch him up as Bucky fucks into him faster and faster. 

Bucky hits true and Steve gasps, arches back, baring neck. He hits again and Steve feels it in his toes. He hits again and—

Metal in the shape of fingers close around Steve’s neck, cutting off his air and its too much, it’s  _too much_ _,_ he’s cresting steep and sudden, so fast he’s shot right past the top and his free-falling, weightless, until he plummets into white so hard he breaks through the other side with a pounding headache.

His windpipe feels too small and when Steve tries to breath in, the air gets stuck before rushing back out in a heavy, body wracking cough. He curls over and keeps coughing, hard and wet and ragged sounding. Every breath he can steal comes in at a wheeze and it  _hurts_. How the  _fuck—_

There’s finally enough break between his hacking for him to hear Bucky and the litany of apologies falling from his mouth. It clicks, then. Why his throat hurts, why it feels like its gonna bruise, Bucky wrapped his fucking  _hand_ —

"You  _asshole_ ,” Steve says, and his voice is hoarse and breathy. He swipes back towards Bucky without turning, groping in the air until he finds his shoulder, then his hair and he closes his hand around it and gives his whole head a hard yank. “You’re so. Fucking lucky that felt good.  _So_  lucky. Ow.”

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm  _sorry."_

 _"Good._ Y--" cough. "Y' _should_ be."


	15. 7th Interlude

"Thor? Who was that? On my patio?"

"The Lady Sif. Delivering to us the location of our lost Captain."

"Hot. Jarvis?" 

“ _Sir._ ”

"Patch me through to Widow and Tweetie-Bird."

“ _You have been patched, sir_.”

"Okay, kids, this is not a drill; Operation Cap Nab is about to roll out. I repeat, this is not a drill. Butts to the nearest elevator. I will see you two in the garage. Iron man; out. Thor? Let’s hear that address."


	16. 10:52 pm

"Steve."

Steve comes awake with a groan, whatever complaint he may’ve had about being  _shaken_  out of sleep dies half-formed in his throat when Bucky covers his mouth with his hand. The next thing that comes into focus is Bucky’s eyes, baring down into his. The intensity is too much, too early. Its frightening. 

"Someone’s here," Bucky says, voice just about as quiet as it can go. The words roll around in Steve’s head without catching. Someone’s here? So? They’ll just. He doesn’t know, they’ll just…tell them to go away. There’s no reason for Bucky to act so serious, to be holding himself so taunt and still like he’s—like—

Bucky gives him a look that clearly says ‘stay’ before he slips off the bed so damn quiet Steve isn’t sure he didn’t just dream it in the first place. Steve turns to watch him bend over his pile of shitty old clothes and—

Gun. Bucky’s gone for the gun. Bucky has the gun, he’s stalking towards the door. 

Steve’s up and moving before he even registers the pain. He puts both hands out over the gun and hisses, “ _The hell_ ,” at Bucky, through his teeth. 

Bucky’s eyes are wide. He flicks them past Steve, back to Steve, and then past him again toward—where? Steve looks behind him and—right, door. Door leading out of the shitty basement apartment. The one they very obviously broke into. 

And ‘someone’ is here. 

And Bucky plans on  _shooting_  them. 

Steve whips around and glares up at him and shakes his head. Bucky is not going to shoot anyone! Especially not butt-naked. “ _Don’t,_ ” Steve hisses, having to force the words out through a resisting windpipe. “Put on your pants.” He holds Bucky’s eyes and for a moment they stare each other down. Like hell Steve’s goddamn relenting. Steve shoves Bucky’s hands to the side and  _points_  and Bucky’s defiance wavers and bends until it finally breaks under Steve’s gaze and Bucky’s huffing and stooping down to pull the dirty pants from the pile. 

Steve hurries to the counter and takes up his boxers. Its not until he’s slipping them on, bent over double and  _god,_  then he realizes just how much he fucking  _aches_. The last thing his body wants to do is be dressing in a rush, and Steve wishes he could oblige it, wishes he could just lay back down, but when he looks over his shoulder, Bucky’s gone to the door, gun drawn, and for the  _love of God—_ _  
_

Forgoing the rest of his clothes, Steve crosses to him and yanks his arm. Bucky doesn’t budge. Steve yanks again and whispers his name. Bucky turns and gives him a _look_  what could peel paint, but Steve gives him a  _look_  right back because he’s not about to let his cock-eyed, vagrant-looking asshole of a best friend dig himself into deeper shit by adding murder to his rap-sheet, right next to grand theft auto and military desertion. 

Bucky looks like he’d prefer to throttle Steve for sticking his nose in where it ain't welcome, and Steve knows just where he can shove that sentiment, but doesn’t get the chance to say so. Bucky’s metal hand takes Steve by the arm and walks him back until he’s against the wall. Steve’s just about to ask if he feels like the big strong hero, now, but then he hears the voices.

He looks up—there’s a vent, he’d guess leading into the big open room what makes up the rest of the basement—and through it he can just make out two men arguing. 

Steve and Bucky exchange glances. Bucky must not be able to guess what Steve plans to do, because he doesn’t make to stop him. 

"Look, we don’t want any trouble!" Steve shouts. Bucky’s eyes go frantic and he tries to fit his hand back over Steve’s mouth, but Steve grapples with him and twists his thumb—thankfully Bucky had tried using the hand he was born with—and hisses, "touch me again, Barnes, you’ll regret it."

Bucky drops his hand but he’s just about shaking with anger and anxiety.

"We don’t want any trouble!" Steve repeats. His voice threatens to crack from the strain of shouting, but he pushes on. "So how ‘bout you head back upstairs before you get yerselves  _blasted_ , arright?” 

Steve raises an eyebrow at Bucky, wondering if the threat is good enough for him. Bucky looks like he’s sucked on about half a dozen lemons, but he doesn’t protest. 

Through the vent Steve catches the words “threaten” and “shoot us” said in what Steve would peg for an incredulous tone, and then—and this sounds like its from a woman— the word “bluffing”.

Well, she wouldn’t be wrong…

"Steve," says one of the men, and Steve’s breath catches in his bruised throat. "We don’t want any trouble, either. We’re your friends; we came here looking for you.” The man speaks loud and slow, obviously wanting him to hear every word, and Steve does, though God knows if he understands what he means. “The guy who looks like Bucky, is he with you?” 

Bucky sucks in a sharp breath, goes  _rigid_  and Steve grabs both of his wrists to keep him grounded. 

"Who’s asking?" Steve asks, eyes holding Bucky's.

"Sam Wilson," says the man.

Steve waits a beat, but the other two don’t speak up. “And who else,” he presses. 

"To—"

"Hi, I’m Tony Stark and I’m generally against being shot at." 

Stark? Oh yeah, that had to be fake. 

"And I’m Natasha," says the woman. No last name? Interesting. "We know what happened to you Steve," she says, and Steve bites the inside of his cheek.

What  _happened_  to him?

"That you’re confused."

Okay, now she's getting a little too close to home...

"We can help."

That Steve doubts and easily.

"The man who looks like Sergeant Barnes is dangerous," she says, "do you know where he is?"

Bucky gives a little jerk against Steve’s hands, breathing going ragged. Steve lets go of his wrists, starts rubbing his arms, shushing him, trying to calm him.

"I haven’t seen Bucky since he was drafted," Steve says. "He made Sergeant?" 

"What about someone like him?" asks the second man, the one who called himself Stark. "With a metal arm?"

Bucky wrenches from Steve’s hands, says, “I can take ‘em,” and twists towards the door.

What happens next goes so damn fast, Steve isn't sure he manages to catch it all. Bucky opens the door, gun pointed out into the room beyond and is immediately tackled. Or attacked. Is knocked over, bodily, to the floor, and his name comes, wrenched out from between Steve's lips before he can think better of it. 

Bucky hits the ground wrapped and tangled up in some kind of netting. Netting that  _moves_ , that constricts tighter and tighter until Bucky stops thrashing, until Bucky  _can't_ thrash anymore. Steve only barely registers someone telling him  _"don't_ touch him" as he runs to Bucky's side. The mesh is too tight for Steve to tear into with his fingers, it's  _skin tight_  around Bucky, Steve can't get a grip, Christ, what if Bucky's  _suffocating_ under this stuff?

Steve's eyes land on the gun. It was knocked out of Bucky's hands and fell just past his body. Behind him, through the door, the people who know Steve's name are trying to convince him to step away from his friend, to come with them, to listen to  _them_. 

Steve grabs the gun and spins around, points it at the nearest stranger. White, dark-haired man, wearing a t-shirt and holding some gun with a wide, long barrel, a make Steve doesn't recognize. If he had to guess, its where the net came from. Steve levels the gun at the man's chest. 

"Stay the hell away," Steve says.

"Whoa," says the dark-haired man. 

"Steve," says the other man. Steve's eyes dart to him of their own volition--he  _should_  stick to one target, but he's jumpy with adrenaline, his heart is pounding, he can feel his breath fighting to fit through his windpipe as his asthma takes it in a chokehold. The man's black, has his hands raised, moves them in calming motions. "You don't wanna do this."

"I said stay the  _hell_ away," Steve says. He locks his arms so tight his shoulders start to ache. Movement right over the man's shoulder catches his eye and he sees the woman, standing back, lips moving as she presses a finger to her ear. Whatever she's saying, its too quiet for Steve to make out.

"Steve, c'mon, the kick-back on that thing will break your wrist," says the dark-haired man. 

Steve feels his mouth twist at the gall of him. "I wonder," Steve says, "which hurts more; a broken wrist...

"Steve, please." The black man, again, "we're your friends."

"The  _hell_  you a--"

There's an explosion above them and something crashes through the floor above. Steve feels his heart stutter, his throat clamp down too tight for any air to eek through. The dust clears and it's--it's a man. Just a man, kneeling, in--in a--is that a  _cape_? 

The image--the _impossible_ image, because what the man's wearing doesn't make  _sense_ \--starts to swim and white sweeps in from the edge of Steve's vision until its all he can see and the world's tilting. Steve faints. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> close-ups of the art for this chapter can be found [here, on my tumblr](http://bluandorange.tumblr.com/post/87139868630/steve-cmon-the-kick-back-on-that-thing-will). Feel free to poke around [my art tag](http://bluandorange.tumblr.com/tagged/blu-vs-art) and/or follow for chapter snippets as they come to me. Thanks again for reading <3


	17. 8th Interlude

"Way to go, Thor!"

"I…do not understand."

"He fainted. He saw you and he fainted."

"The lady Natasha said you were in need of ‘back-up’."

"Nat—"

"I might’ve guessed it would happen."

"Would someone grab his clothes?" 

"On it."

"He's still breathing, right?"

"Yeah, he's still breathing."

"Okay… _wow_ , okay, is anyone else smelling what I’m smelling." 

"You do not think—"

"Those do look suspiciously like Bucky-Hickeys." 

"We’ll ask him about it when he wakes up."

"Thor, take Barnes to the holding cells. We’ll meet you back at the Tower."

"Aye…"

"Don’t throttle him until we have the full story."

"Hmm."

"Okay, so, I’m driving this time."

"No, you’re not."

"Excuse you, it’s _my_  car.”

"And you’re not driving it."

"Guys, can we just…"

"Yeah, yeah, okay."


	18. 11:21 pm

Steve blinks back to himself, feeling light-headed and breathless. Its not a combination he likes, it never means anything good. He must make some kind of noise or move in some way to draw attention because the pitched-low voices around him pull up and stop. People waiting around for him to come back to consciousness isn’t exactly new, but he doesn't recognize the speakers right of and can’t remember what knocked him out in the first place. His head’s still spinning.

The pain in his throat comes back first, when he tries to swallow. He wonders if he went out from being choked, but, no, there’s no tell-tale pounding in his temples. His head doesn’t really hurt, just feels stuffed full of cotton, and the ache in his windpipe is old enough he can close his mouth down around the cough that threatens to rattle out from in him. So it wasn’t that. 

Nothing feels especially damaged to warrant a black-out from the pain. Christ, maybe it was just a plain ol’ fainting spell. And here he’d hoped he’d started outgrowing the damn things…

Steve puts off opening his eyes just yet and continues to take stock. Both his ass and his back are against cushions while his shoulder’s pressing into something hard, so he’s probably sitting somewhere. Feels pretty luxurious for a couch, but also feels like…something. Something familiar—a car? Right, oh right, Bucky’s car, the one he’d stolen, was that where Steve was? He’s not so sure, but he can’t wrap his head around why. Whatever he knows subconsciously isn’t rising to the surface. 

This disorientation really speaks towards fainting. God, he hates fainting. Always throws off his whole goddamn day. 

Steve brings a hand to his head and scrubs it over his temple and into his hair. Shit feels ratty and sweat soaked. Hadn’t he washed? 

Oh, right, he had, and then he’d had sex. That probably explained the tingle across his jaw and collarbone, and the ache right between his legs up into his guts. They weren’t entirely unpleasant, so he hadn’t catalogued them as ‘damage’.

The thought of sex brings his mind to Bucky, and a sudden worry overtakes his chest, making it constrict. Why’s he—what’s the matter with Bucky? Did something happen to Bucky?

Steve opens his eyes before he remembers. There’s a black man sitting next to him and a white man riding shotgun, leaning back over his chair to face them both. Their faces click, the gaps in his memory fill.  _They’re_  what happened to Bucky. 

Steve sucks in a sharp breath as every muscle in his body, bruised or otherwise, goes tense. Its hard to get air past the sudden and erratic beating of his heart, and the man in the front says, “Uh-oh, anyone pack an inhaler?”

Steve wants to knock his shiny white teeth right out of his mouth. 

"Steve," says the black man. His voice is calmer, gentler, and Steve can’t bring himself to hate him nearly as viciously, but he sure as hell doesn’t trust him. "It’s alright—"

"Where’s Bucky," Steve asks. His voice sounds  _terrible_  and talking hurts like a son of a gun, but since he has a lot of questions to ask, Steve guesses he’ll just have to deal. 

"He’s okay," says the black man. "You can see him in a bit; we’re all headed to the same place."

"The nuthouse?" Steve asks. 

There’s a snort from the front passenger's seat. “What makes you ask that?” 

Steve really hates being laughed at. Guy riding shotgun is already on the shit-list and it don’t look like he’s getting off it any time soon. “Its that or jail,” Steve says, cooly. 

"Don’t worry," says the black man—did Steve know his name? He didn’t think so, he didn’t recognize any of these people outside the confrontation in the basement. At least the guy sharing the back seat with him seems less inclined to get off on Steve’s confusion. "We’re not taking you to either."

"And what about Bucky?"

"That man isn’t exactly  _Bucky_ ,” shotgun says. Choices phrases from earlier—how long ago was that? how long had he been out?—flicker up in Steve’s mind and he fixes the white guy with a look.

"You keep saying that," Steve says, "how would you know?" He looks between the two men, gauging their reactions as he continues, "Bucky’s my best friend; I think I would know him from a fake."

Shotgun mumbles something about them being ‘more’, most of it lost as the black man speaks over him, saying, “You sure he hasn’t been acting ‘off’?”

"The metal arm has to be new," shotgun says. Steve bristles at the mention, at the _confirmation_ , then remembers it was them knowing about the arm what had set Bucky off in the first place. "He  _was_  topless. C’mon, you had to’ve seen it.”

Steve taps into his frustration and lets himself sound good and exasperated, “You think I’d be defending him if he were a fake?”

"Would you?"

The question comes from the driver—the  _woman_. Steve glances to the back of her head, then up at the rearview mirror. Its angled at him and she’s looking back, meeting his eyes. Steve’s shoulders tense and he shuts his mouth tight. There’s something about her—she’s measuring him, he can see it, and like hell if he’ll be found wanting. 

"Would I what?" he asks.

"Would you defend him? If he looked like Bucky, had his face and voice," she raises an eyebrow, "would you do what he told you?"

The double meaning is about as obvious as the whisker burn all across Steve’s face and front. He raises his chin, asks, “what are you implying, ma’am?” Because he won’t walk into something that obvious, not when she seems to have her mind already made up. 

The smile in her eyes makes him think he'd just handed her the answer she wanted, anyways. Her eyes drop back to the road. “He took you to that safe-house,” she says. Its not the turn Steve was expecting.

"We needed a place to stay," Steve says. "Our lease ran out." 

"Yeah it did," says shotgun, "and that was about seventy years ago."

Steve isn’t sure what his face does, but something in it makes shotgun’s expression soften. Steve thinks he’d rather have his jeering than his pity. 

"Uh, pause," says the black man. The odd phrasing is enough to distract Steve from the anxiety starting to sink its nails into his gut and he turns his attention the man sitting next to him. "Steve, I think you might be wanting these back," the man says. Steve’s clothes are in his hands, still folded.

Steve looks down and realizes he’s held this entire conversation whilst in nothing but his boxers. He takes his clothes and tries not to think about what’s dried down his front and who might have noticed. He doesn't think of the hot flush burning on his cheeks and ears, either. “Who are you, anyways?” he asks as he belts up his pants. 

"We’re your friends," the black guy says. 

Steve gives him a withering look. “Who are you  _really?”_

"Natasha, Tony, Sam" shotgun says, pointing at the driver, then himself, then the man sitting next to Steve. "Also, backtracking, when I said that thing about it having been seventy years, I wasn’t actually  _joking?_ ”

Steve locks his jaw, not letting any of the panic make it past his throat and into his eyes. What Tony’s suggesting is impossible.

Of course, _impossible_  has been the order of the day. 

Steve doesn’t voice this, he waits, knowing if you give people enough time and enough silence, they’ll usually explain themselves. He focuses on buttoning up his shirt.

"You’ve been outside enough to notice," Sam says, tone still so gentle and, when Steve looks to it, his face is so kind, it almost disarms him. "Things are a little different. Probably a  _lot_  different. You aren’t seeing things, Steve, they’ve changed.” The man raises his eyebrows, shrugs a little. “You gotta be curious about why.”

He’s being fed a baited hook, here , and he knows it. And he hates it. “Let me guess,” he says, “you have all the answers.”

"I don’t think he has a single trusting bone in his body," Tony says. Steve glances to him and he’s got something in his hands, fingers moving, tapping across what could be glass? "Thankfully,  _I_ have been compiling evidence.” Tony shifts towards Steve, leaning over the median dividing the driver and passenger’s seat to hold something out to him. “Now don’t faint.”


	19. 9th Interlude

"Jarvis, how do our friends fare?"

“ _It seems they are currently crossing the Brooklyn Bridge. Estimated time of arrival is twenty-two minutes_.” _  
_

"Hmm…Tell me, is there any credence to Sergeant Barnes and our Captain being in intimate relations, before your Second World War?"

“ _I could not say, sir._ _While may historians have debated in favor of them harboring such a relationship, a romance between the Captain and his Sergeant has yet to be verified by any credible sources, including the surviving members of the SSR or Howling Commandos.”_

"And yet it is debated. On what grounds?"

“ _While many site the body language between Captain and Sergeant within several newsreels as clear indicators of shared, if hidden, passion, I believe the most compelling piece of evidence may be the ring of hickeys currently visible on Sergeant Barnes’ neck.”_

"Oh...I had not seen those...Thank you, Jarvis."

" _Of course, sir._ " _  
_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> guys. It's Jarvis and Thor.


	20. 11:30 pm

"Recognize that handsome devil?"

Steve squints at Tony, trying to gauge if what he’s being is sarcastic, or if he just  _always_  sounds like an asshole. The quirk to Tony’s lips, the cant to his head, it almost reminds Steve of Bucky. So it could really go either way. He’s probably just an asshole. Steve looks back down at the little rectangle of glass cradled in Tony’s hands.

There’s a picture of him on it. A picture of Steve. It’s not one he recognizes, he doesn’t even know where it is he’s standing, where it must’ve been taken. The background’s blurry, its hard to distinguish much past the dark tree-line and what could be a jeep there at the left, but there's Steve, front and center, in focus. He's got on a set of dog-tags, which is surreal. Steve keeps his father’s dog-tags locked away in box in his dresser. Sure, he takes them out sometimes to look at them, but he’s never  _worn_  them, certainly not in public. And its not like he could be taking Bucky’s out for a spin, so what’s he doing, wearing a pair here?

A less pressing fact, yet one that still manages to grate on his nerves, is that at the time, Steve clearly didn’t realize the picture was being taken. He’s squinting off to the side, hair an uncombed mess threatening to fall into his eyes. Its not flattering.

"Sure," he says to Tony.

Tony taps the glass with his index finger and the picture changes—slips off the side of the glass to be replaced by another, like Tony’s got a movie screen right there in the palm of his hand. 

Now Steve’s looking at Captain America. 

He’s not in that patriotic uniform, but its him, with his impossibly wide shoulders and a handsome smile that looks so much better when framed by a fully defined jaw.

Steve looks up at Tony again, doesn’t say a damn thing, just  _looks_  at him and lets his irritation show plain on his face. Tony’s eyebrows shoot up, but there’s a hint of pleasure in his surprise, like seeing the flat expression on Steve is its own little success. Well, that settles it. Tony is definitely an asshole.

"What, he’s not familiar?" Tony asks. "That’s you."

"No," Steve says. "Its not. Paintin’s not half bad, but its not me."

"That’s not a painting," Sam says. Steve didn’t know why he expected Sam to be on anyone’s side  _but_  Tony’s, but apparently he did, cuz he’s swiveled his head around and is squinting at the man before he can stop himself. Sam smiles uneasily. “It’s not,” Sam says. “That’s a photo. That’s you, man.”

Tony speaks for Steve, saying, "And there’s the look that says we’re crazy." He pulls the glass back to himself, pokes it a bit and says, conversationally, "You really have not changed at all. How about some moving pictures?" 

Steve gets about a second or two to ponder the sheer amount of bushwa chocked into those two, short sentences before the glass is back in his face and making sounds.

Speaking. 

And showing  _moving pictures_. 

“ _Captain America may be the strongest, fastest man alive, but he wasn’t always that way_.”

Steve’s watching a cartoon. There’s a red silhouette of a well-built man holding a round shield, who digs in his heels and deflects a barrage of bullets before slipping the shield off his forearm and throwing it like a discus in the direction of his foes. The camera pans away and—there’s Steve. Standing at attention and looking wholly unimpressive. It could be a painting, but it could be a photograph. Steve is wearing a set of dog-tags.

“ _When Steven Grant Rogers tried to enlist in 1943, he was five-foot-three and weighed a grand total of 92 pounds. His list of medical ailments were about as long as his arm.”_

Steve-on-the-screen becomes a silhouette. His height and weight appear in stark, white letters beside him. Below that, each and every one of his deficiencies appear, one at a time. The list is not as long as Steve’s arm; it is the same height as Steve, which is much worse. 

 _"Of course, Rogers wasn’t chosen for Project: Rebirth because of his physique, but because of the_ quality _of his character.”_

The shame that’s coiled itself around each of his ribs constricts. Steve is suddenly,  _acutely_  aware of every single place Bucky’s touched him, inside and out. He’s been trying to ignore it, but he’s been sitting in a wet patch that may have seeped through his boxers to his pants at this point. His cheeks heat and the scratches across them pulse. He can feel his heartbeat in his ears and in his lips.

"What is it you want from me, exactly?" Steve asks, eyes meeting Tony’s, voice raised over the continued narration of the cartoon. Tony sits back, taking the screen with him. The sound dies at the press of his fingers.

"Well, see, you’re kind of our  _friend_ , and you’ve sort of been missing for going on eleven hours now?” says Tony, “And the last time you were alone with your boyfriend, he shot you, so saying we were concerned is something of an understatement. There’s also the whole ‘no longer super-powered, probably convinced its still 1942' thing.”

“ _You were this_ ,” Bucky had said, pointing at Captain America. " _What happened?”_

Steve swallows, looks at his own hands for a moment—large hands on the end of thin wrists. “Was it a gut shot?” he asks, eyes returning to Tony’s. Tony looks a little stunned. Steve glances to Sam, finds him just as surprised. Steve would almost feel smug, if he wasn’t honestly in _need_ of that answer. “ _Well?”_

"It was," says the woman, Natasha.

Steve scrubs a hand over his face.

"How’d you know that?" Sam asks. There’s a hopeful note to his question and Steve wonders if Sam thinks, maybe, Steve’s remembered it on his own. Steve doesn’t quite believe Tony when he says they were friends, but he would believe Sam.

"Because Bucky told me," Steve says. His pulse starts beating faster again, everything in him rising at the chance to  _defend_  his friend. He tries to keep his voice level, to not sound panicked, but convincing. “He tried to apologize. And yeah, right now, he's off his nut, but he’s still Bucky, and he needs my—” He takes a breath. “I can help him.” He meets Tony’s eyes again, gaze challenging. If Tony chooses to argue that point, Steve will meet him head-on and explain just how wrong he is. “Taking him to an  _asylum_ won’t—”

"He’s not going anywhere like that, Steve," says Sam. "He’s going where we’re going, and its nowhere like that."

"He’s safe, Steve," says Natasha. "We’re almost there; you can see for yourself." She’s looking at him in the mirror again. She continues to measure him. After that cartoon, Steve is at once more concerned by what she sees in him, and less motivated to challenge it. "We’ve been running on a lot of assumptions. When we get there, you'll have a chance at sharing your side."


	21. 11:47 pm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> nothing in like a week and then two chapters in a day, what is going on

This is a nightmare. 

Steve feels untethered, free-falling, but still  _stuck_ _here_ , unable to escape this, even as the floor drops out from under his feet. 

He’d gone numb by the time they’d left the car. He hadn’t tried to run, had followed the strangers who called themselves his friends into an elevator, had been just present enough to tune back in when Tony asked ‘Jarvis’ if ‘Thor’ had finished setting Bucky up in the ‘guest suite’. A brit came on over the speakers and gave him a polite affirmative, then added, “ _I see the operation was a success. Welcome back, Captain.”_

The title, this other  _life_ , was already beginning to weigh on Steve, like a stone tied around his neck. He hadn’t replied. 

Perhaps he should have paid attention to the floor numbers, perhaps he should have pressed for more information about where Bucky was, how he was, but Steve couldn’t bring himself to focus on anything besides how much he hurt. Everything ached. The exhaustion had settled deep into his bones, made all the heavier with the knowledge he wouldn't be resting any time soon. It took all his concentration to just stay upright.

The elevator had opened onto a bright room, and Steve had stepped out, not quite seeing, not quite there. 

"See," Tony said. "Told you. He’s fine. He’s  _fine._  Right, Thor?”

"The Sergeant has not moved or spoken since I transferred him to the chamber, so I cannot say." 

A figure, large and wearing a looping chest piece that Steve had pointedly refused to think too hard about, stepped to Steve, then, and rested a hand on his shoulder. The hand took up his  _entire_  shoulder. Steve had to tilt his head back to meet the man’s eyes. They were extremely kind. 

"It is good to see you safe," the man said, and Steve could see that he meant it. Could feel he meant it, when he punctuated the statement with a gentle squeeze of his shoulder. This man was much like Sam; familiar and invested in ways Steve had not earned, that he didn’t deserve. Steve had ducked his gaze, at a loss. "You may not remember, but we are Shield Brothers, you and I."

"That’s…swell," Steve had said. The man released his shoulder and gave it a soft pat, and then he stepped aside. His hand shifted to Steve’s back. Steve leaned into the support, despite himself. In front of him was another room, separated from them by glass. There was nothing in the room but the form of a man, propped up against the transparent walls, dark hair hanging in his face and limbs cocooned in a dark blanket.

No, not a blanket, in a series of nets.

Steve recognizes the man is Bucky, and Steve starts to fall.

Steve catches himself on the glass, eyelids fluttering as he tries to stay present through the light-headed rush. He doesn’t wait, doesn’t let the hands of strangers try and right him, he just moves, pushes himself into motion until he’s across the room, until he’s dropped down beside Bucky.

Bucky doesn’t move, doesn’t acknowledge him. Steve says his name and there’s no response. He hits the glass just an inch from Bucky’s face, the slap ringing around him, and Bucky doesn’t so much as flinch.

"Okay, I’ll admit, this looks…kinda not great."

Steve spins on Tony, and spits, “What the _hell_  did you do to him?” 

"Well, I, uh, I don’t know, maybe he’s just a little dazed from the whole getting captured thing? Maybe he’s just tired?" 

Steve pushes his breath out from between his teeth and stands, starts walking around the perimeter of the cell, fingers dragging over the glass in search of a seam. The cell is circular, practically the size of that basement apartment, if not larger, and yet its empty save for Bucky. 

"Steve, look, its not like we gave him a sedative or something." Tony’s following him, but at a step behind, giving him space. This Steve is grateful for. He wants these people anywhere near him. "I’m not sure that would even  _work_. So unless Thor was—”

"I have done nothing to the Sergeant." 

"—Well, see, okay, then I have no idea what he’s about right now."

About halfway back around to Bucky, Steve thinks he feels the seam of what could be a door. Right next to it, another seam. He turns to the men and says, “Open it.”

"Uh," says Tony. "No? No, I don’t think so."

"Why the hell not?" Steve asks. He points at Bucky, says, "why? Is it because he’s dangerous? You have him  _tied up_!” 

"Yeah, uh-huh, and he’s staying that way," Tony says. "And you’re staying away from him."

"Tony," says Sam, from somewhere behind Steve. 

"No," says Tony, "No, nope, my house, my rules, I have veto power and I say that the Cap stays away from any and all  _crazy_   _assassin boyfriends_  until he can at least defend himself should said assassin boyfriend have a relapse.”

"He’s not gonna hurt me!" Steve says, loud and higher than he means, and even he can hear the strain and panic in his voice. 

"He’s already hurt you!" Tony says, motioning to Steve sharply. The concern is plain on his face, and Steve hates him for it, hates that he sees Steve as too weak, when Bucky  _clearly needs him_. “Have you seen your neck?” Tony asks. “If that’s not domestic abuse, I don’t know what is!”

"Tony, that’s  _enough_ ,” says Sam. He tries to touch Steve’s shoulder, but Steve spins out of it, steps back so he can see him and Tony, Natasha, and other man—Thor—all at once. “Steve, he’s not going anywhere—”

"He was fine," Steve says. "He was  _fine_  and then you came and--you don't even _know_ him!"

"Steve, he isn’t in there  _just_  for  _your_  protection. Its to protect all of us.”

Steve turns to Natasha, feels the fury keeping him upright threaten to wither from the unapologetic way she meets his eyes. “Your friend,” she says, “has already shot me  _twice_.” She gives a deliberate nod Bucky’s way. “He stays in the cell.”

"Bucky…Bucky wouldn’t hurt a dame," Steve says. He needs it to be true. Its starting to hit, what they’re saying, what they’ve  _been_  saying. Steve doesn’t want to believe it, doesn’t know what to do if its real and true and that’s honest to god the man Bucky is now. When  _is_  now? One question leads to another and Steve’s back on the edge of the chasm, facing the threat of another drop. 

"Maybe," Natasha says, "but he’s not just Bucky anymore, Steve, he’s also the Winter Soldier. And the Winter Soldier has been ordered to kill women and children, and he has. Without hesitation." She doesn’t sugar coat it for him, she lays it out bare, and that hurts. It hurts so much, but its still easier somehow for Steve to swallow.

"We could kill him, Steve," she says. Knows that it’ll get a reaction, knows the fear hits him sudden and strong, because yes. Yes, they could.

"We could hand him over to the government, and let them try him for all his political assassinations, and he has  _many_. But we _won’t_. We’re keeping him here, and we have every intention of breaking the programming he’s under.” She tilts her head back, swinging some hair out of her eyes and everything about her lets him know she’s  _considering_  him. She must know that a part of him doesn’t want to disappoint her, doesn't want to give her reason to doubt his constitution. “Before we can do that, we need to know what it is we’re up against. You need to tell us what’s happened.  _Then,_  we can start helping Bucky.”

Steve teeters on the brink. 

"I don’t have a choice," he says. "Do I."

The men around him squirm a little, clearly uncomfortable with the truth. Natasha shrugs and says, “not really, no.”

Steve steps back from the edge, away from the drop-off. He squares his shoulders, holds her eyes with his own. 

"Fine."


	22. 11:59 pm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> special shout-out to Naga, who's [comment](http://archiveofourown.org/comments/11005551) may have single-handedly saved Sam's characterization in this fic. It also directly effected where this chapter ended up going. Thanks, bb. 
> 
> And thank you, for being here and giving this a read

"No offense, man, but you look just about ready to keel over."

They’re back in the elevator. There had been two—Tony and Thor had taken one, Steve, Natasha and Sam took the other. They’d let Steve pick who he’d ride with. While Steve’s almost too tired to be petty, he does hope Tony took the choice personally. 

"I’m fine," Steve says. He combs his fingers through his bangs, adjusting the sweep of them, like his hair isn’t disgusting and his general appearance isn’t beyond salvation. "Just need’a cuppa joe…"

"Y’ _could_  call it a night, though,” Sam says. “It must’ve been a long day—”

"I _said_ , I’m fine." 

Sam smiles like he should’ve known better, shakes his head. “Okay, man, just don’t count on me to stay around much longer, I’ve about reached the end of my rope. I’m just a normal guy, like you; all this running around…” He leaves off the details, letting Steve come to his own conclusions.

He doesn't try to. He's still caught up on the idea Sam could be 'normal'.

Sam doesn’t look normal to Steve. Sam is handsome, strong, well-kept and well-fed. He’s talking with a man who, if their story is to be believed, was at least as tall as him yesterday, and now just barely reaches his collarbone, and Sam isn’t batting an eye. Sam can't be too much older than Steve, Steve thinks, and yet there's maturity etched in his every line, from the set of his mouth to the straightness of his back. And, some how, it doesn't seem to weigh on him. He carries the maturity with grace. Sam’s confident, confident enough to repeatedly interrupt his white friends, hell, he’s got  _white friends_ _,_ and powerful ones, and all of whom have treated him with respect, even when they've openly disagreed.

Sam's no Joe, and Steve can’t figure out if humble is part of his character, or if he’s trying to play to Steve’s sensibilities, to sooth his ego now that he knows—knows?—he’s supposed to be, expected to be  _more_.

Steve’s tired, though, and when he’s tired, he tends to see the worst first, in stark relief, while the good becomes too fuzzy and suspect to even make an impression. He thinks Sam is playing him—they all are, in their own way—and he becomes even more certain of it when he glances back Sam’s way and catches him  _looking_. 

Sam tries to cover it with a smile—and it’s a good smile, very heartfelt, he’s a handsome man—but Steve isn’t so tired that he doesn’t see the  _worst_ , and there was a split second there where Sam’s eyes were focused on Steve’s neck and his expression was  _concerned._

Tony’s words— _"domestic abuse_ "—flash bold and bright behind Steve’s eyes. Shame washes over him in a wave heavy enough to make him shiver. 

Sam’s looking at the bruises and thinking what, exactly?  _"What has this poor_ boy _gotten himself into?" "How could he_ let _this happen to himself?" "How do we keep him away from that_ monster _?"_

Shame turns to anger turns to hate—not for Sam, or any of the strangers expecting him to accept them as friends—but for the situation, for Steve's fucking _rotten_ luck.

It’s not like he wants Bucky to hurt him, like he hadn’t tried to stop him or talk him out of it. But, Christ, he’s not weak. Not like they think he is. He can take it. Bucky would never—

Bucky almost choked him to death while still  _inside_  him. It’d been a split second, things were fine and Bucky was himself and then something had changed, and Steve was only alive because somehow Bucky had changed back again. Without him. Steve wasn't there, had no control, was entirely, utterly vulnerable.

Bucky wasn’t in control of himself—Steve couldn’t expect him to be, that’d be stupid. He’d been so  _stupid._

If something had happened to him, Bucky would've never forgiven himself. Steve can't let that happen--he's dealing with so much already. Steve just has to be smarter about this. For him and Bucky, both. He can't keep putting himself in situations where he has no control. Steve is still standing, is capable of finding his footing, but if he’s not  _smart_ , he won’t survive the journey, won't survive shouldering Bucky to safety when he's all Bucky's got. He has to be smart. He has to be  _smart._

He has. He. He had, has. He. Smart. Has to. He.

"—eve."

Steve jerks back to consciousness, and vertigo crashes into him sudden, terrifying. His knees give, but there’s a warm side and gentle hands supporting him a split second before he sinks. He’s halfway to a couch somewhere when he realizes the hands aren’t Bucky’s, and its not until he’s sitting on that couch that he remembers the name of the man the hands belong to.

Steve wipes at his own face, drags shaking fingers his stringy hair, and breathes. He breathes, and with every breath, he feels the world slipping away another inch. He knows he needs to stay awake, is  _desperate_  to, but can’t recall why, and he is so goddamn  _tired,_ and all the pain is finally starting to go  _away._

Steve curls up on his side and loses the fight. He sleeps.


	23. 10th Interlude

"But anyways, you still take your coffee blacker than me, right? Steve? Is…did he seriously just fall asleep on his feet?"

"Looks like it;  _Steve_.”

"—Shit! Steve, you arright? Easy man, I gotchu."

"Whoa-no, did he faint again?" 

"Not really, I think he’s just tired, y’know, the crazy’s finally caught up with him—here y’go, man, just rest a bit." 

"…psst, guys, I don’t think he’s getting back up." 

"Perhaps the Captain would rest more comfortably in his own quarters."

"Yeah, good idea." 

"I will see to it, then. When I return, we shall discuss strategy. Perhaps over coffee."

"Yeah, okay, you all have fun with that, I’m actually going to be in the lab, so if you need me, or he wakes up, or…whatever, I’ll obviously be  _busy_  but come and get me anyways.” 

"…Alright."

"You boys enjoy your coffee, I’m going to go get us some more information."

"What? Nat. Please. Oh my god."

"Relax, it won’t be an interrogation. I promise I’ll keep my hands to myself."

"What’re you even gonna ask him?"

"His side of things."

"Well…good luck. I think."

"And what of you, Sam?"

"Who, me? Nah, I’ll be here."

"Then I will return shortly."

"Sure, man. Go tuck the Cap in."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It'll get discussed eventually, but for those of you wondering;
> 
> Steve has roughly 12 more hours before the spell wears off


	24. A Very Special Interlude

Fingers in his hair.

Fingers in his hair, gentle, soothing, fingers brushing his hair away from his eyes, fingers reaching under his hair to stroke his neck. 

He walks himself through the memories, over and over, as he waits. He thinks, he hopes, if he can internalize them  _enough_ , if he can know them well  _enough_ , there’ll still be some part of them left, buried deep in him, too deep for a wipe to clear away.  

If he’s lucky, they won’t wipe him, they’ll just kill him. He’ll die, but he’ll die with some fraction of himself, he’ll die remembering today—yes, that would be best.

If he’s not lucky, they’ll wipe him and try to start over. He doesn’t want that. He’s already been disobedient, he’d show themjust  _how_ disobedient he can  _be_ , if that would convince them he’s of no use to them now. If it would make them decide to dispose of him.

But they may decide to wipe him and start over. 

They may wipe him, and he doesn’t want to lose today. 

Today has been  _so_  important. He’s realized there is so much buried in him, so many feelings and thoughts and memories he hadn’t known about. He hadn’t known he was  _capable_  of holding all this inside of him, but its there. It is unquestionably  _there_. 

And he wonders if this means the wipes weren’t wipes at all—if maybe they just shoved everything that made him  _human_  down, down deeper than he knew how to go and then filled his grave with tar, too thick and too hard to break through once dry. And he hadn’t tried to unearth any of it before, hadn’t known anything was there to begin with. Hadn’t been  _him_ enough to try.

But he also wonders if there aren’t more  _effective_  ways of wiping him. Ways they thought they wouldn’t need to implement. He’d been fooled, so they had been fooled, too. Only, they would know now, and they’d adjust their machine accordingly. And maybe, this time, they  _would_  uproot him, all of him, and he would return to it and it would have nothing. Again. 

He doesn’t want that. 

He wants to make the roots of his being so deep and so strong and so  _numerous_ that they’ll never be able to get to it all, will never be able to weed him out of himself ever again. He wants to become indestructible. He wants to survive. 

He’d found himself today, so he’ll start with today. He’ll  _remember_  today. He will. He wants to. He needs to. 

He’ll remember his name, just the way Steve had said it to him; “ _You are James Buchanan Barnes._ " Hands on his face, on each cheek, cool hands, pliant, smelling of sweat and graphite. Hands holding him, making him meet Steve’s eyes, intense eyes, focused and dark and blue and alive. " _You are James Buchanan Barnes_ ,” Steve had said. “ _Always have been. Always will be_.”

It had been _terrifying_ , and yet there was nothing he wanted more than for Steve to be  _right._

“ _Bucky,”_  Steve had said. Hands over his hands, naked, wet shoulders, skin freshly washed,  _there_ , and fit to him, fit perfectly to him. Safety. 

“ _Bucky_ ,” Steve had said. Smiling, naked, flushed, eyes even darker than before, kiss bruised and breath heavy, under his body, under his hands, in his hands, fit to him perfectly. Fingers in his hair. Happiness.

There’s parts of today he doesn’t want to keep. Gasping breaths, curses, noises of pain, bruised hips, bruised neck, anger, fear, fingers in his hair forming a fist and yanking. He only thinks of these briefly and then pushes them away. 

He only wonders what’s happened to Steve briefly, because that question threatens to take him apart from the inside, scare him into hiding and makes him want to welcome the wipe, just so he'll never have to know. The question comes back to him, he chokes on it for a moment, and then he pushes it away. 

Fingers in his hair. “ _Bucky_.” Lips on his lips. Joy.

He doesn’t know how long he gets before the woman enters his cell, but he hopes it is enough.

He doesn’t respond—she already knows he is not just it anymore, she’s using his name, trying to get him to respond to his name, but that’s not the disobedience he trusts himself to be capable of. Ignoring her he can do. Staying still he can do. Talking back, no, he doesn’t have the words.

If he could, he would hurt her, but he cannot. He cannot move, he is bound, but even if he wasn’t, he’s not sure he could hurt her, or any member of Hydra. He doesn’t know how deep the roots of James run, but the roots of the Asset go on for  _miles_. He doesn’t know their meaning, but his owners— _its_  owners—do. When they tore James out of him, they filled his place with the Asset and it was never the Asset’s place to know itself. He hasn’t had the time to choke the Asset out of him—its still there, worked into his bones, and they’ll exploit every compulsion they’ve planted as its foundations, he knows they will, and he won’t realize what they’ve triggered inside him until its too late. 

He doesn’t want to remember it, but he knows the Asset has taken him over more than once today. It's still stronger than he is, in some ways. In a lot of ways.

The woman speaks to him and he ignores her. She starts using other languages and it almost responds in kind, when she speaks to it in its mother tongue. He sucks his cheeks and lips in and bites down. He does  _not_  let it speak for him.  _He_  is in control and he’ll show them just how disobedient _he_ can be. 

He tries to figure out what the Asset would be compelled to do, so he can do the opposite. His eyes briefly flick up to the woman, glancing at her through his bangs. Its eyes dodge her face in a panic, force his eyes to the floor. Eye-contact. It thinks eye-contact is wrong. Yes. Yes, he can feel the certainty of that.  _  
_

He aims to misbehave. He digs his fingernails into his palm, focuses on that pain and not the panic, thinks of Steve, thinks of his name, flicks his hair out of his face and turns to stare at her.

Her face does not register as Hydra. Her face—

She—

Why does it know her, if she isn’t Hydra? If she isn’t Hydra then who—

"See something familiar, Soldier?" she asks. He doesn’t—it isn’t supposed to—What does he say, what should he— "I believe you were ordered to kill me."

That can’t be true. If it was ordered to kill her, she’d be dead. “You’d be dead,” he says. 

She shrugs. “You gave it your best shot, but Steve ended up being a very effective distraction."

Steve. 

_Steve._

God, where is Steve, where is Steve, where is—

"He’s alright," she says, tone something like gentle. "Though he shouldn’t be; you were ordered to kill him, too. Weren’t you?"

It was. He didn’t want to. He’d known him. He  _knows_  him.

"Well, he seemed convinced what you really did was save him. Carried him ashore. Does that sound familiar?"

…yes. Yes, he’d done that. That was one of the first times he’d been able to decide, though at that point, he hadn’t realized there  _was_  a him  _to_ decide. This was before he’d realized that he and it were not the same, and were capable of wanting different things. 

He realizes the woman is looking at him, and that he hasn’t given her an answer. Slowly, he nods. 

"Did you?" she asks. "Carry him ashore."

"Yes," he says. 

He thinks this pleases her. He thinks that this was the answer she wanted to hear. 

It is happy to please. He relaxes a little, eased by the implication she wanted Steve to live, and that she’d wanted him to disobey. 


	25. 3:58 am

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh wow would you look at that, the relationship tags have changed, _I wonder what that could mean._

Steve wakes up because he can’t breathe. 

He’s used to this, this is just part of his life, so it’s not terribly frightening when his first waking thoughts are  _glass in throat_  and  _chest on fire_  and that the first thing he hears is the awful rattle of air fighting to reach his lungs, and losing.

Steve starts to sit up, to prop himself against the wall what he’s got his bed pressed flush to, but his wall isn’t there, and this isn’t his bed. Its not Bucky’s bed, its not a hospital bed, its big and comfortable and he doesn’t remember falling asleep in it. He scoots back, spine straight and shoulders flat against a strong wooden headboard, and he tries to figure out how the fuck he  _got_  here, and also tries to breathe. 

His need for the latter soon overpowers his interest in the former. 

Someone opens the door at the far end of the room and calls his name. He can’t place the voice right away, but he doesn’t have to; the person tells him who it is—“‘s okay, Steve, its Sam, its just me, its Sam”—as they cross to him. Steve sits straighter, higher, tensing with anxiety and  _shame_  as Sam reaches for him, but then he doesn’t touch him, no, he’s holding something  _out_  to Steve. Sam says, “you ever have an inhaler?” 

The light is on in the hall—or wherever the hell room the door leads to—and its more than enough for Steve to see by and he can fucking tell the L-shaped thing he’s being offered doesn’t look nearly large enough to be an inhaler. It’s stressful, looking at it. Knowing it  _could_  help him, but not knowing how it’s supposed to work. There’s no pump, there’s no place to drop in the drugs, Sam isn’t even  _holding_  anything in his other hand, not a dropper not any medicine—does that mean it’s already been prepped? Steve gives a jerky shrug, not knowing what to say, or where he’d get the breath to say it with. Its okay; Sam seems to get the gist.

Sam points to the short leg of the device and says, “this end goes in your mouth, then you pressed down, here, on top, arright?” He passes it to Steve. “One puff, hold it a couple’a seconds, breathe out. Easy.”

Steve nods and slots the open end between his teeth. The button on top depresses under his thumb and a burst of unfamiliar chemicals hits the back of his throat, coating his tongue along the way and he winces. Its a struggle to breathe it in. The off-brand Asthma Nefrin he usually got didn’t taste good either, but at least he was used to it by now. And it never hit nearly so strong, or wet, and he has to fight to not cough this new stuff right out again, has to remove the inhaler and cover his mouth with a hand to keep the mist inside those couple of seconds Sam said it’d need. 

He still coughs. He coughs and  _everything_  hurts. His throat feels pinched and his sides are so stiff its like they’re tearing whenever he moves wrong, and he’s moving ‘wrong’ a lot. ‘Moving wrong’ and ‘breathing deep’ seem to be nothing but overlap. 

Sam rubs Steve’s back and that grounds him some, helps sooth the panic stirred up by the pain and the hopeless mindset he tends to fall into during his attacks.

Sam’s hand is big and warm and gentle and it rubs circles up and down Steve’s spine and relaxing comes easier and easier, and Steve bends over his own legs, weight on his elbows, elbows on his knees, because otherwise he may just try pressing himself against Sam’s side. It doesn’t worry him yet, though. He’s too relieved by the way the tension in his lungs start to ease to worry about that. He’s too grateful to Sam to realize its for more than just the inhaler.

Sam gives Steve’s shoulder a pat and gets up to head through another door. Steve misses him immediately, and thats when the reality of it hits him. 

He’s so very glad that Sam doesn’t turn on the lights when he comes back. If he can see his blush from the hall light alone, he doesn't say so, just offers Steve a glass of water, says, “here y’go, man. Wash that chemical taste outcher mouth.” 

Steve nods, mumbles a hoarse, “thanks”, and takes a gulp of water. He doesn’t meet Sam’s eyes

In ‘38, Bucky got his first job working full time down at the docks, unloading ships for eight hours a day, six days a week. The pay was only so-so and Buck came home so sore from lifting those first couple’a weeks, Steve half wished he could talk him into quitting. Into finding some place else. There wasn’t any place else, though, and they couldn’t afford to have Bucky out pounding pavement for no good goddamn reason, so Steve never said a word. 

Bucky kept that job for little over a year. Most of the crew he’d worked with were blacks. 

Bucky hadn’t gotten along with all of them, mostly had it rough with the older fellas who pegged him as trouble. They could see right through his charm, down to his impulsive, reckless center, and steered clear. Bucky had more luck with guys around his own age. Bucky was real good at making friends wherever he went, and the yard was no exception. 

Steve called this unlikely group of friends Bucky’s ‘Dock Boys’. 

One of the Dock Boys was Eli. 

Steve had only met Eli a handful of times, but they were all good nights worth remembering. He wonders if he’s the only one who  _can_  remember those nights in any real capacity, considering how blitzed the rest of them liked to get. Meeting up with the Dock Boys always seemed to mean getting drunk on the beach. They’d catch too much trouble trying to go anywhere respectable as a group—four black boys palling around with a white boy and his fruit best friend, it would’ve drawn nothing but unwanted attention—so they snuck down under the bridge and set up camp there on the shore and drank and made merry. It was summer. It was a good summer.

Probably the first time he was genuinely happy since his ma passed.

And sure, Steve had been a third wheel, hadn’t talked much, didn’t rightly know what to say, but he’d loved listening. And they’d all seemed fine with giving him something to listen to. They talked about work, about family and other friends and, of course, dames. 

They were all painfully hetero, and as far as Steve knew, Bucky had them fooled into thinking he was one, too. Never said anything to make him think otherwise.

Which is why Steve hadn’t had anything to drink. Had to make sure he’d keep his hands to himself, couldn't ruin the good thing Buck had going. 

Christ, though, he’d wanted to touch Eli. 

Eli was nothing like Sam—he was shorter than Bucky, round and soft in the face, round and soft everywhere, though Steve was sure since he was working the docks, he’d find hard muscle under those warm curves. That thought alone made it hard to look at him sometimes. He thinks they must’ve thought he was shy. Boy, did he have them fooled.

Of course, the real reason Steve liked him was because Eli treated him so kindly. He’d shoot questions Steve’s way, explain jokes or jargon Steve didn’t get, was so fucking invested when he found out Steve could draw. God, Steve had  _almost_  done something the night he’d brought his sketchbook, when he just about had Eli hip to hip while he turned the pages. He remembers how he smelled—not well enough anymore to put a name to it, just that it was nothing like Bucky or Steve or anyone Steve knew. It was entirely unique to him and Steve may have loved him for that. 

Because Steve is pathetic. 

Steve takes another gulp of water. 

Steve is pathetic, and now? Now he likes Sam.

Why does this keep happening to him? Why does he keep falling for other guys? And black guys, even,  _Christ_. 

He worries, he really worries about how he’s so desperate for attention, his heart just latches on to whomever, so long as they show him even a little affection. It only hurts him in the end, and  _he knows this_ , and yet here he is, again, tending to a new flame like he’s never been burned in his life. 

You’d think his relationship with Bucky would be enough to smarten him up. Yeah, he knows why he’s so in love with Bucky, and its not cuz Bucky's gorgeous or funny or a great dancer, especially since he’s also a hothead and a drunkard and fucking  _tease._ Steve doesn’t love him cuz he thinks he’s perfect, or even all that great. He loves Bucky because Bucky gives him the time of day, and has been giving it to him for the last seventeen years. 

And here’s Sam, saving Steve’s ass and giving him his time with that fucking  _smile._

Someone just put a bullet in him already. 


	26. 11th Interlude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I recently finished a very stressful job application and all I want to do with my ample freetime is write more of this. So hopefully there's gonna be a lot of updates heading your way. I don't see a point in putting off posting them, so they'll go up as they finish.
> 
> Thank you, everyone who left comments last chapter, even y'all who told me you were concerned and may have to step out. I'm grateful to have y'all at all--you've got no obligation to me to read this and that makes your presence all the more meaningful.
> 
> There was a suggestion tho that I point that that Steve is an unreliable narrator and a LOT of that stems from his self-deprecating nature. He doesn't give himself any credit. Just something to keep in mind when he's talking shit about his relationships, especially his relationship with Bucky.
> 
> Anyways, as always, thanks for reading <3

"Was no one gonna tell me?"

"Tell you what?"

"That Cap’s awake."

"…clearly someone has told you."

"Yeah,  _clearly_ , but it was Jarvis, which is just  _weird_  since I distinctly remember telling  _you_  to tell me if and when our mini Avenger woke back up. What's with that? Why didn't you tell me?”

"Why would we tell you when we're clearly conspiring against you?"

"That’s not funny. Thor, tell her that’s not funny."

"Anthony, it is but a simple jest. We have not been keeping secrets, we simply saw no need to disturb you. Sam is with the Captain now and has every intention of easing him back into slumber."

"…fine. I’ll accept that, but only because you know I like it when you use my full name."


	27. 4:13 am

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You may notice the lack of chapter title. Do not panic! I'm gonna go back and edit all the chapter titles soon, get all that squared away after the next interlude, before the next chapter in Steve's POV. I've some other edits for previous chapters planned, too, I'll let you know when those get done
> 
> Thanks as always for reading, y'all <3

"What happened?" 

Steve’s got his breath and finished his water and just about has his wits back about him, though he ain’t sure he rightly remembers what all went on before he passed out. It all seems equally impossible, and yet here he is. Here Sam is. Steve may not be able to tell dream from reality, but maybe it’s all true, and that thought alone has him sitting up straighter in bed. 

"You fell asleep on your feet," Sam says. Sam’s mouth skews to one side, pinching as he tries to suppress a smile, and Steve looks to the floor. "Literally on your feet, in the elevator, in the middle of a conversation. All of two seconds after telling me you weren’t even tired." 

Steve scratches at his own hairline, then drags his fingers through the greasy mess of it, just to give his hands something to do. He suddenly realizes he doesn’t just hurt all over, he also feels downright  _unclean_. 

"But hey, I’m not blamin' you, man, you’ve had a long day."

Steve thinks that he isn’t the only one, but he has trouble tracking the thought back to any context. His mind keeps wanting to circle back around to how disgusting his body feels, how much he’d like to fall back to sleep, but he closes his eyes and fights through it. What the hell has he forgotten, now? The answer comes to him in seconds.

"What about Bucky?" he asks. 

Sam looks like he wishes Steve hadn’t asked him that, which Steve takes to mean he should be glad he did. “Nat went to talk to him a while ago. That seemed to go okay.”

Steve frowns, because that’s an answer to a question he didn’t ask, and Sam knows it. “How long was ‘a while ago’.”

"About four hours?"

Steve swings his legs over the side of the bed and stands, and just about every muscle in his body shivers in protest. Sam stands, too, but doesn’t move to block Steve as he starts crossing the room, heading for that open door. Sam just says, “hold on, he’s not going anywhere,” and Steve rounds on him, his patience spent, near nonexistent, even for the likes of Sam. He knows his anger won’t mean much, but he lets it show all the same, even as he braces a hand to the wall to stay upright.

“ _Yeah_ ,” Steve says. “And he’s been down there for  _four hours_  while _I’ve_ been—”

"You’ll still have to tell us what all happened before he can leave there," Sam says. "It could take a while. All I was gonna say is you have time to clean up, take a shower, if you want to." He says it so gently. Sam is unbearably kind, and Steve doesn’t know if he wants to trust him because that’s a good idea, or because that kindness is attractive,  _Sam_  is attractive, and a part of Steve wants—. 

Steve squeezes his eyes shut, pushes those thoughts away because they’re just noise, he can’t do this, it doesn’t  _matter_ anyways who he likes and who he doesn’t like. The only thing that matters is Bucky, and getting Bucky out of those nets and out of that goddamn cell. 

"It could help you collect your thoughts," Sam says. He’s not wrong. And Steve needs to do that, he needs to get level, and he needs to do it where he’s alone. 

And it’ll take him time, because right now he’s a mess. Inside and out, he’s a mess. 

Steve nods, and then nods again. Sam gives him one of those smiles that ain’t happy and ain’t sad, its just  _understanding_  and nods right back. “It’s right through there,” Sam says, pointing to the second door, the one what he left through earlier and came back with that glass of water. Steve starts that way. He steals a glance at Sam as he passes and, yeah, there’s the worry. Sam probably thinks Steve’ll slip and fall and break his spine in there all by himself, and maybe he will. The way his luck’s been lately… All Sam says is, “I’ll go find you a fresh change'a clothes.”

Steve mumbles a thank you. He regrets it later, as he strips, sitting on the can in the most opulent bathroom he’s ever been allowed into. He should’ve been more polite. Sam’s only ever tried to help him, has helped him. The last thing he deserves is Steve being ungrateful.

He’s just so tired.

How many times has he thought that today? He just keeps coming back to it. It’s not like it’s stopped being true. 

Steve sighs through his nose, stands, unbuckles his belt and struggles through the dizzying wave of vertigo as he bends over to push his pants and boxers to the floor. He sits back down.

He’s started getting that hollow feeling, cold and deafening, that overcomes him whenever he feels especially helpless. It always starts small, a prickle just under his skin, but right from the onset, it just makes him want to curl up and go away. 

He knows he doesn’t have the luxury. Still, he can’t make himself move for a long time. He isn’t sure how long, just knows when it’s been  _too_ long, when it’s gotten ridiculous and he’s had his fill of it, of  _himself_. He tells himself just what he’s gonna do; he’s gonna get in that shower, he’s gonna make himself presentable, and then he’s gonna go help Bucky. None of that can happen if he doesn’t get in the shower. He _has to get in the shower._

Steve counts down from three. He stands on one and pulls his ankles free of his dirty clothes, walks himself into that glass box, puts himself just right of the shower-head and—God dammit, which one of the knobs turned on the water?—and twists one of the knobs under it, the biggest one, from off to on. The water comes on in a steady stream. It comes on warm. 

It doesn’t stay warm for long. The temperature ramps up to hot faster than Steve knew was possible, and he has to fiddle with the dials for a good minute before getting the water to come out the way he wants it; not so hot that he’s breathing steam, not so cold that he’s shivering his ass off. Not so hot that he’s comfortable, just cold enough to keep him awake. 

The water stings no matter where he stands. Hurts when it hits his neck and shoulders, hurts when it hits his back, hurts when it hits his sides. The pain keeps bringing him back to himself, fighting with the growing white noise in his ears and under his skin. Steve shifts until the water hits him squarely in the back of the head, and the pain starts slipping away.

Steve stands there for a long time, eyes downcast and unfocused, not seeing the tiles under his toes. Thoughts turn over in his head but nothing catches. The numbness inside grows until he either can’t feel all his bruises and abrasions, or he can’t care enough to mind them. The emptiness becomes bottomless, and he doesn’t fight it. He’s still awake, and for a while that’s enough. That’s all he can manage. He’s awake, he’s on his feet, and there’s nothing more he can do besides wait it out.

A thought surfaces, slow, pushing all the fragmented half-thoughts aside, because it is so large, it is so overbearing, even as empty as he is, there’s no room left for anything but this singular thought and the weight of as it settles. He’s not surprised by it—how could he be? This thought has been part of him for so long, the only wonder is why it took this long to rear its ugly head.

Look, he just...wants it all to end. 

He wants it to be over with. All of this nonsense. He knows how useless it is, wishing things were different in ways they could never be. But its what he wants. Now, especially. It’s all he wants, with the whole, cavernous expanse of his empty. 

He’s so fucking tired. 

He knows he can’t expect the world to change for him. It won’t. He can’t control anything or anybody but himself. If he could, he'd take himself away. If he's the one to go, that’ll fix it, that’ll give him what he wants. It’s a nice thought, there's just no way he could follow through.

Even if there is no world where he’ll leave this bathroom and not have to face the awful, impossible mess he’s found himself in, there is no world in which he could turn his back on the only person he loves, the only person he has left, and the only person who's relying on him now. There’s no world in which he could excuse giving up or letting go. 

He is very used to wanting things he can’t have. This? This is nothing new.

Steve doesn’t know how long he stands there, staring at nothing and feeling sorry for himself, he just knows when its been too long, when its gotten ridiculous and he’s had his fill of it. He pulls himself back to reality, feels the numb the water has pounded into his skin and drags his hair back out of his eyes. He takes a breath and starts looking for the soap.


	28. 12th Interlude

"How fares our Captain?"

"He’s taking a shower."

"How is—god _dammit_ , Wilson!"

" _Hey_ , I tried, but the guy didn’t get any of his stubborn from the serum, okay? That’s all him. What he needs is a clean change a clothes."

"Let it be known I’m advising Jarvis to send up an outfit under Extreme Protest. That kid should be  _sleeping.”_

"He fears for his friend; perhaps this gives him strength where he would have none."

"He’d only have to wait, what, like—Five? Six more hours? Before this would be over and he’d be back to being, y’know,  _himself_ —” _  
_

"And we’d miss out on a golden opportunity."

"You can’t be serious—he should be exhausted, like—Nat, you’ve  _seen_  his records, you breathe on him wrong on a  _good_ day—”

"He’s Steve, he’ll tough it out."

"My god, you’re a sadist. I can’t believe it, how am I surprised, I mean, of  _course_  you are.”

"I spoke with Barnes. He’s more aware than we gave him credit for, and according to him, being around  _this_  version of Steve has done the most to breech his programming. It’d be a mistake and a waste to keep them separated.”

"What the hell happened to ‘Barnes is a loaded gun, Steve isn’t safe around him’?"

"I don’t remember saying anything about leaving them  _alone_  together.”


	29. 4:42 am

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bless my followers. I don't drink coffee and if they hadn't come to my aid and explained why the fuck coffee is so important, this would've been a very different chapter. 
> 
> Also you may notice that the chapter titles have changed. Its the only edits I've actually followed through on, but its a good edit to make I think. Now every chapter is labeled with the in-story time they start at

Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Steve does not have the patience for this horse-shit.

He fists his hand in the tee-shirt, has half a mind to go out there and ask Sam what the hell he’s playing at, but the idea of explaining  _why_  a simple article of clothing could be so damn insulting is more exhausting than he’s prepared for. It knocks the anger right out of him, leaving only bone-deep irritation. He drops the shirt back to the bed and runs his hands over his face, through his drying hair. 

“‘s just a shirt,” Steve says to himself. He locks his fingers behind his head, and the way the heels of his palms press into the bruises on his neck grounds him somewhat. “It’s just a damn shirt, just wear the damn shirt.”

At first he hadn’t even been sure what he was looking at.

He’d come out of the bathroom and seen clothes laid out on the bed for him, and was honestly more surprised at the near-perfect fit of the pants than the weird design on the tee-shirt. The pants were denim and admittedly comfortable, but wearing them made him feel awful homely. He was sitting on the bed, folding up the cuffs and considering the implications of his hosts putting him in jeans whilst surrounded by all this wealth, when his eyes started running over the large circle-in-circle design printed into the soft cotton of the shirt.

Damn unusual, having that large of a design, he’d thought. It sat squarely across the chest, would span, he’d wager, the whole of his rib-cage once on him. Steve could only guess at the shirt’s actual colors, as his world was regulated to reds and blues and had been for so long, he’d forgotten what green and yellow looked like. He just knew it’d be a hell of an eye-sore if the design wasn’t, in fact, meant to be patriotic. The pale star made him think maybe it was, and the whole of it was awful familiar…

And that’s when the design clicked. 

And Steve does not want to spend the rest of the day wearing Captain America’s goddamn shield on his fucking chest. He _doesn’t._  

He doesn’t want to ‘just wear the damn shirt’, so he starts checking drawers. While he does find plenty of other tees, none of them are anywhere near his size. He tries one on and is disgusted by how it hangs off him, hem falling far past his waist, an inch past his goddamn crotch. He  _swims_  in this and it’s embarrassing.

So his options, as they stand, are; look like a fucking child, or live in Captain America’s shadow. 

The latter half-encompasses the former, but at least that shirt  _fits_. 

He crosses back to the bed and looks down at the now-crumpled shirt. He honestly considers for a moment just…turning the damn thing inside-out, but knows he’d be caught dead before he goes out among strangers wearing  _anything_  improperly. The jeans are bad enough. He hates looking—

Christ and damnation, he doesn’t have time for this.

Steve puts on the damn shirt. He puts it on and makes sure it’s tucked in proper, even tries to tug some of the wrinkles loose before he walks out the door with his head held high like he couldn’t give a piss if you paid him.

As if he didn’t have enough problems, his ass has started aching in earnest, now. He may have finally cleaned any lingering evidence of the fuck from his body, inside and out, but he feels the fuck in ways he didn’t a few hours ago, in ways he’s struggling not to telegraph now, to the whole godforsaken world. Steve tries to walk normal, to not let the care or lack thereof Bucky took when screwing him into that cheap mattress show. His years of practice serve him well in this venture.

Everyone is waiting for him, all his self-proclaimed friends, perched around a thoroughly modern looking kitchenette. Steve’s eyes glance from one to the next, making a cursory attempt to place each in his memory, but the majority of his attention is elsewhere.

There’s this  _smell_  and it hits him gut deep the moment he's opened the bedroom door, and he knows it but he’s not sure—

Is that  _coffee_?

Dear Lord, it is. He’s never in his life smelled coffee so…deep. It’s earthy and rich and almost  _sweet_  for all the ways its  _nothing_  like the crap he’s used to drinking, and Steve doesn’t realize he’s standing there, breathing deeply with what must be a hilariously slack expression, until Sam motions for him and calls him over.

"Hey man," Sam says, and his smile is easy as ever, and Steve returns it with a lopsided one of his own. Sam’s smile grows wider, showing off that little gap in his front teeth, like Steve’s just gone and made his day. Steve does his best to ignore the way his stomach flutters. "Looks like that shower did you some good," Sam comments as he takes the stool next to his own and pulls it out in a silent offer.

In front of the stool is a mug of coffee, sitting next to a bowl of soup and a thick piece of fresh bread. 

Steve’s stomach clenches and he realizes the last thing he wants to do is eat. His insides feel shriveled up tight and trying to fit something into them seems like more pain than its worth. He gets like this, when he’s low. He hates it. It’s damn counter-productive.

Coffee usually helps. 

"Thanks," Steve says, though he’s not sure who to direct it to. He pulls himself up onto the stool, taking care not to put too much weight on the sore parts of his keister, and hooks his bare heels over the bottom rungs like he would at the greasy spoon down the block from their flop. His hands wrap around the cup—one on the handle and the other just barely curved around the opposite side, the exterior too hot to hold in earnest—and draw the coffee towards him. Steve’s eyes close almost of their own volition during the next deep breath in. When he lets the breath out, the knots making up his insides have loosened by half an inch.

"Well, hey, glad you like it."

Steve glances to the speaker--messy black hair, ridiculous looking Vandyke, oh  _right_ , the  _asshole_ , said his name was 'something Stark'--and feels some of those knots tighten again. The man is looking particularly smug at the moment, in that care-free way that well-to-do fellas get when they've gotten hold of your attention and are gearing up to let you know just how well-to-do they are. "That's our 'House' blend," the man says, breezily, "beans shipped in straight from Haiti." 

"What did you say your name was again?" Steve asks, finding it very easy to sound bored. 

The man's lips pucker and there's a pause before he says, "Tony." He starts motioning to the others gathered around, "and this is Nat and Thor and--"

"No," Steve says, "its okay." He raises the cup to his lips. "I just couldn't remember yours." He glances away as he takes his first sip of coffee. He doesn't really  _need_  to know if he's gotten under the guy's skin. He thinks, though, that he catches Sam out the corner of his eye trying to hide a smile behind his hand. The coffee, though. God. It tastes almost as good as it smells, bitter without being sour, and it's so  _warm_. Steve finishes swallowing and turns to give Tony a pointedly half-hearted smile. He's pleased to see the tight purse to the man's lips. "Coffee's good though," Steve says.

He knows he should not get such a  _kick_  outta pushing another man’s buttons, but Lord knows Steve’s only capable of tolerating so much bullshit. The last thing he needs is some asshole with deep pockets spouting off about how he uses his fortune like Steve should give a goddamn. Steve doesn’t. And he also can't sit here, lingering over a cup of joe, even if it is the best cup of joe he's ever had in his goddamn life. He has more important things to do with his time.

And if he isn't mistaken, they all know that. There's four pairs of eyes watching him right now, and after another long draw from his coffee, Steve sets the cup down and gives them his full attention.

"I wanna know what's going on," Steve says. He looks at each of his 'friends' in turn as he continues, "why it is I don't remember you, and what exactly happened to Bucky. And then after that, I wanna see him."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just some housekeeping junk before I let y'all go. 
> 
> Seriously _thank you_ so much for reading and letting me take up some of your time. Thank you so much if you've left comments in the past or plan on writing one now. I appreciate it so damn much like I literally can't express that enough. 
> 
> I've gotten some really great crit, especially in the last couple of chapters, and its really gotten me thinking about what all I'd do to make this a stronger story. There's a lot I'd change, but I'm starting to realize I'm not very good at implementing that change. At least not right now. I write this shit for fun, and the prospect of going back and editing it has sparked some strong anxiety in me, thus the huge pause in updates. _I do not want y'all to stop giving me crit_ cuz even if I can't put it to good use retroactively, I can always apply your advice to future chapters. Basically old shit's gonna stay borked, and I'm letting you know that _and_ giving myself permission to let it stay borked and keep moving forward. I wanna keep moving forward with this story and...I wasn't before. I was stalling. And seriously, fuck that.
> 
> Thanks again for letting me take up your time <3


	30. 4:56 am

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the next interlude is literally just a single line so it's going up the same time as this chapter 8>b
> 
> oh also, you may remember there being something about Steve thinking he's 25? He's not. I miscounted. He's 24.

"You quarreled with a wizard late yesterday morning."

Steve looks at the blond man—Thor, standing beside Sam’s stool, long hair pulled back in a thick braid, the front of his plaid button up left open to show the clean, white tee underneath—and waits for him to say he’s joking. Thor doesn’t. He does, however, have the decency to look a little sheepish as Steve continues to stare and the silence drags on.

“He’s telling the truth,” Sam says. Steve glances to him and reads ‘ _I wouldn’t believe it either_ ’ in the curve of his lips. A part of Steve wishes he could call bullshit, but when it comes from Sam…

Well, at least no one’s jumped to challenge him on the ‘seeing Bucky’ part. Yet.

Steve takes a steadying breath and asks, “where?”

“Here, in New York,” Tony says. He’s propped up on his elbows, on the other side of the marble-topped counter, across from Sam. He won’t stop fiddling with his hands. The fidgeting makes him look younger than he is, when Steve's half sure Tony's older than his ma was, when she died. “Kid was trying to rob a bank on Broadway.”

 _Oh,_  Steve thinks, _so I_ _stop_ bank robbers _now._ He tries to hide the bitter smile already half-formed on his lips by taking another pull of coffee.

But, okay, that  _is_  about where Steve remembers this whole mess starting. “Chambers and Broadway,” he says once he’s swallowed, just to clarify. Tony and Nat—not her full name, its something longer, but what Steve can’t recall and isn’t about to ask. She’s behind the counter, next to Tony and across from Steve—both nod. If Steve isn’t mistaken, Nat looks mildly impressed. “It’s where I woke up,” Steve says. He doesn’t mention the part where he was half-buried in garbage.

"You were fighting the good fight, but Mr. Magic kind of had it out for you," Tony says. Without warning, Steve’s left ear starts to ring, making Tony’s words sound far-off and muffled. Soon the only thing he’s getting from that side at all is white noise.

God. Dammit. 

Steve takes one last gulp of coffee, sets the mug down and tries to make it look good and casual when he turns and cocks his right ear Tony’s way. He hopes whatever fresh irritation makes it through to his face is interpreted as him losing patience with Tony and whatever the hell it is he’s saying now.

All of them, save Nat, are lined up on Steve’s left side, so they must not know about the bad ear, and Steve sure as hell ain’t telling them about it now.

He bets Captain America doesn’t have a bad ear.

God, it’s already starting to feel like the left side of his head's all stuffed with cotton.

Steve forces himself to get back with the program and catches the ending of one tangent—”…a blast to the past.”—just before Tony starts in on the next. They meet eyes and if Steve didn’t know better, he’d say Tony’s a little surprised to find he suddenly has Steve’s undivided attention. “What year is it, anyways?” Tony asks, “Up here?” He motions to his own head, indicating Steve’s by association. “And, uh.” Tony draws a sloppy circle in the air, presumably to indicate the rest of him.

"Spring of ‘43," Steve says. He’s fighting the urge to raise his voice over the deafening buzz. Would look like a fool if he did—he’s the only damn one who can hear it. Since its good a time as any, Steve looks to Sam and asks, "what year is it ‘now’?"

"Uh, 2014," Sam says with an apologetic wince. Steve, well. Steve forces himself to nod. 

"You’re still totally from the ’40s," Tony says. "This you, I mean." Steve has no idea what he’s going on about. "The spell he hit you with didn’t rewrite your history or anything."

"…I never thought it  _did_ ,” Steve says. What exactly is Tony implying, that—that Steve shouldn’t worry because his life still happened the way he remembers it? Well, Christ, he’d  _fucking_ hope so. 

"Well," Tony gestures a little aimlessly, "there you go, no worries."

Steve can feel his expression pinch. He drops his eyes to the side and does the math. “That’d make me  _ninety-six_ ,” he says.

"Technically," Nat says, "you are."

Captain America didn’t look ninety-six. He just looked like Steve. Sort of. Steve thought the Captain was just him bigger and stronger, not  _older_. 

And Bucky sure as hell didn’t look  _ninety-seven_. 

"Technically," Steve repeats. Seems an important distinction.

"You crashed a plane into the Arctic in ‘45," she says, and is she  _meaning_ to imply  _Steve_  was piloting the plane? Steve. Colorblind and near-sighted Steve. Well sure, no real wonder it  _crashed_. “You were frozen and recovered in 2012. Because of the serum that made you Captain America, you survived.”

"Serum," Steve repeats. First he’s heard of it. He half-remembers the cartoon Tony showed him during the car ride—had it been mentioned then?

…wait, so that means _Captain America_ crashed the plane.

Huh. Guess we can’t all be perfect.

"Yeah, you kind of volunteered yourself to be the army’s lab-rat," Tony says. His lips quirk up and he leans his forearms flat on the counter to crowd a little further into Steve’s space. Steve already knows he’ll hate whatever comes out of his mouth next. "Little desperate to serve our country, were we?" 

"Wouldn’t know," Steve lies. He doesn't care how far Tony leans forward, he's not budging an inch for him. "Hadn’t exactly gotten the offer, yet."

Nat swats at Tony without looking at him, and Steve realizes the man had gone and invaded her space, too. Steve fights back a smirk. Serves him right. "It came in the summer of ‘43," she says, "so no, you wouldn’t have." 

Summer. Just a few months away. Steve wonders if it’d be before or after Bucky was meant to finish basic. 

…Bucky could’ve finished basic. And Bucky now, the one waiting for him down in that cell, wasn’t really ducking the draft. And it hadn’t been a month since they’d last seen each other.

But it also  _couldn’t_  have been seventy-some years. 

"So I look the same," Steve says, then thinks to add, "as I did in ‘45, because I’d been frozen and thawed out again. Is that right?" He gets a round of nods. "Okay, so, why does  _Bucky_  look the same?”

Thor raises a hand to stop the others from answering. “My friend," he says, "your meal grows cold." He gestures to the soup and bread, all but forgotten off to Steve’s right. Steve turns to look at it and though Thor continues, his low, gentle voice gets lost under the ringing in Steve’s ear. He’s finished it, whatever he was saying, before Steve turns back again. Well, great. Steve will just have to assume it was just more stuff about food. He pulls the plate over so he can have it in front of him _and_ hear the conversation. 

"Thanks for reminding me," Steve says. He's still not very hungry, but tears off a piece bread anyway, and starts dipping it in the cooled broth of the soup. Steve glances up. No one has said anything. They’re all watching him. Okay, maybe he did miss something important. Shit. "Do you know what happened to Bucky or not?"

Sam shifts uneasily and glances at Nat. Tony says “Thor’s right, why don’t we hold off until after you’re done with that,” and motions to Steve’s food. 

Is  _that_  what Thor'd said? That Steve shouldn’t hear the rest until after he’s eaten?

Steve sets the little chunk of bread down on the plate and pushes the whole of it back to the side. “No, I think you should tell me now.”

Tony rolls his eyes. “Uh-huh,” he shoots a look to Sam. “And there’s the stubborn.”

"Well, y'know, it happens I’ma little short for time," Steve says. Tony snorts. Steve keeps going, like he hasn’t realized his stupid fucking slip, like he doesn’t care that he may’ve just passed the rich asshole some fresh ammunition. "I have a  _friend_  locked up in your private joint, and I ain’t sittin' here t’goof around, I’m here t'convince you to let 'im  _out.”_

"Arright, Steve," Sam says. "We hear you." He’s using the same gentle, defusing tone as when they were in the car. "It’s a long story, though, so, how ‘bout you work on that soup. Eat and listen." 

Steve drops his eyes. The flare of anger has left him jittery--or maybe that's the caffeine from coffee finally hitting his system--and he'd much rather keep spitting venom, especially Tony's way. But he can't, and after a breath he pulls the plate back to where he had it. 

"Alright," Steve says. "I'm listening."


	31. 13th Interlude

"My friend, your meal grows cold, and this tale is one that may steal your appetite."


	32. 5:06 am

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> y'all I am on a _roll._

There’s something Steve keeps coming back to every time the conversation shakes the foundations of his reality; he doesn’t get to decide what and what  _not_  to believe.

This isn’t something he can play fast and loose with. There’s no point picking and choosing which nugget of bullshit he’s willing to accept and which he’d rather exclude from his changing worldview. That’s not how this shit works.

It’s all or nothing. 

Steve’s always been like that, he’s always been ‘all or nothing’, especially when it comes to the big stuff. The only exception may be Bucky. No, no that’s not right. Steve knows he can’t have all of Bucky, but he’s done his best to give that man all of him. Maybe, then, the exception with Bucky is Steve knowing he could never make it on ‘nothing’. ‘Nothing’ ain’t even an  _option_. He’s already gotten so dangerously close to ‘nothing’. He  _knows._

But all this hogwash, all this  _impossibility_ Steve started his day denying, from Broadway to Brooklyn and back again, it’s real now. Some of it he doesn’t want to believe, but he can’t deny that  _enough_ of it lines up. The arm, the shot to the gut,  _Captain Fucking America_ , they’re all things Bucky tried to convince Steve of, things that have since been confirmed by Steve’s so-called friends without his prompting.

And, yeah, it’d still be easy for Steve to dismiss it all. It’d be real easy. He could convince himself these strangers are trying to pull a fast one on him, that he shouldn’t believe a damn thing they say, even if some of it’s more believable than others. He won’t, though. At this point, that’d just be cowardly. Steve Rogers ain’t a coward and he’s ain’t never taken the easy way outta  _nothing_ , if the easy way wasn’t also the  _right_  way. And it ain’t right, denying it now. 

It ain’t right for Bucky. Believing it will help Bucky, he gets that now. He’s doing this for Bucky.

No one moves until Steve’s finished chewing. And it goes pretty well, that first bite. Hell, it tastes  _great_ , and Steve thinks, shit, maybe eating won’t be so hard after all. But as he rips another chunk off the bread, he thinks of that bread passing between his lips and the lingering taste in his mouth turns sour. His insides shrink another half inch. It hurts.  

Nat gives him something else to focus on. She opens the drawer next to her, pulls out a thick manilla folder and drops it on the counter between them. 

Sam makes a high surprised noise in his throat. It’s adorable. “Did you just—were you seriously keeping that in the  _silverware_  drawer?”

Nat tilts her head in a way that reminds Steve of an amused cat and smiles. “Maybe,” she says. 

Thor lets out a bark of laughter almost loud enough to break through the fog in Steve’s left ear. It startles Steve, makes him jump despite himself. “My apologies, friend,” Thor says to him, but Steve only half hears him.

Sam’s put his hand is on the small of Steve’s back, as if to steady him. When Steve—trying to hide his surprise, probably doing an absolute shit job of it—shoots a glance to him, he finds nothing but gentle reassurance in Sam’s expression. 

Steve’s never—

Steve looks pointedly back at the folder and clears his throat. Sam takes his hand away. “It’s fine,” Steve says. He doesn’t look up, doesn’t want to catch whatever silent conversation is going on above his head right now, between his—between the  _Captain’s_  friends. He swallows down the hot wave of embarrassment and motions to the front of the folder. “What, uh, what is that, Russian?” 

"Da," says Nat. That gets him to look up—but maybe she knew that, maybe that’s why she said it. Her smile is slight and not without warmth. It’s…understanding. Steve isn’t sure he can take much more of this. He’s not sure what to make of the Captain’s friends—and they are the  _Captain’s_ friends, not his, not his, he doesn’t know them—and he doesn’t have the time to waste on trying to figure them out. He doesn’t have the energy to waste on trying to impress them, either. He motions for Nat to continue, and she turns the file around right-ways for him and opens it.

Steve draws in a slow breath. 

There’s Bucky, clipped to the back of the front cover, looking like he’d be right at home on the front of a dime store paperback. He looks like Bucky does now—the long hair, the scruff, the heavy lines under the eyes. It’s half obscured by frost, but Steve thinks he can just make out that metal shoulder.

Steve’s sure he should feel…something. Fear, maybe. Surprise. But he doesn’t, he just—

It looks like a painting. It looks like something Steve could do if he really gave it his all. And Bucky would get a kick out of it. Steve knows he would; Bucky’s always loved science-fiction, no matter how trashy or nonsensical the plot. It’s like looking at a story he’d make up about himself. Space-man Bucky, frozen in suspended animation for the long trip to Mars.

Its the second picture, the one pinned down at the bottom, that gets Steve’s breath to catch. 

There’s  _his_ Bucky. 

Freshly shaved, not a hair out of place, and in uniform, god. Steve hasn’t seen him in uniform yet. He wasn't gonna get the chance to until after Bucky finished basic, and well—

God, though, the bastard looks good. He’s  _gorgeous_. Got his hat cocked to the right  _just_  so, just enough to tell you everything you need to know about his character. Lord, the nerve of him, the fucking  _nerve_ …

"Barnes was lost in action in ‘45," Nat says. Steve blinks back to himself, pulls himself out of Bucky’s eyes and back to the present. He glances up to the other photograph—and that’s what it is, isn’t it? A photograph?—and  _now_  his stomach threatens to drop. Now the wrong is starting to hit him. “Presumed dead. In reality, he’d been taken prisoner by a Russian organization. They specialized in turning people into weapons. When they weren’t training him or forcing him to kill, they had him on ice.”

Steve rolls this information over in his mind, tries to understand without being consumed. It’s terrible, it’s beyond terrible, to think this happened, this already  _happened_. 

Something clicks and Steve looks up to Nat and asks, “where was I?”

Nat doesn’t miss a beat. “You were completing your mission, capturing a Nazi scientist named Armin Zola, and bringing him to the Allied forces for interrogation.”

"So I hadn’t crashed the plane yet."

It’s minute, but her lips purse. Steve doesn’t know what it means, just that it must mean something. “No.”

"Why weren’t we working together?" He expects to be told that Bucky was just a soldier, he wasn’t a superhero, so he didn’t work with the likes of Captain America. He’s prepared to hate the Captain even more for that. He doesn’t expect Nat looking down and shaking her head, a knowing smile spreading on her face. 

She looks up again, meeting Steve’s eyes and for the first time, he believes this woman considers him a friend. “You were,” she says.

Steve doesn’t get to choose what he does and doesn’t believe. 

"Tell me what happened," Steve says.

"Okay, Steve," Tony says, but Steve keeps looking at Nat. He can hear it in the man’s tone, how he’s trying to pull Steve back from this but he  _keeps_  looking at Nat as her eyes soften and she sets her jaw, and he knows she’s gonna tell him. Steve cocks his head, turning his left ear to Tony, and to Sam. He keeps looking at Nat.

"You were on a train in the Alps," she says. "And during the course of the mission, Barnes got thrown off it. He fell over a thousand feet, he only survived because he’d been given something like the super-soldier serum, and you didn’t know that at the time."

Steve can hear his heartbeat in his bad ear. It’s heavy and insistent and ever so often there’s that flutter. He tries to breathe slow, calm. 

"Are you saying,"—she is, he knows she is, but he has to ask anyway. He has to hear it, or else its not true—"I didn’t look for him?" 

If Sam’s talking, Steve can’t hear it. He can only hear Nat, and its because she’s leaning in and angling herself toward his right, almost like she knows. 

"You didn’t have the time to. Steve," she says, stern, "it wasn’t your fault."

Meaning it was. It was his fault. Bucky falling, Bucky being captured and used. Steve can’t find his voice for a moment, his mouth’s gone dry, and as he wets his tongue his eyes drop from Nat’s and onto Bucky’s. His Bucky. He can’t see much of the uniform, everything but the collar lost off-frame. He can tell, though, the collar’s been pressed with care.

He has to believe it, he doesn’t have a choice. 

"Did you try feedin’ me that line the first time I found out?" Steve asks. When he looks up, his eyes feel strained, the muscles around them pinching of their own volition. He keeps his expression tight. His voice comes out low, and maybe a little angry, and maybe on another man that would mean something. "Did it work then?"

Nat sighs, sits back. “No.”


	33. 5:21 am

Nat tries to explain it to Steve. Something about the world ending, about every major city across the globe being in real, immediate danger. Something about having less than a day and there being no time.

Steve half listens, half works on screwing his head on straight. 

He blames himself and the guilt claws at his throat and behind his eyes, but he can’t give to it yet. Bucky may deserve better than him—he does, C _hrist_  does he ever—but Steve is all the guy’s got. He’s the only one who knows him, Bucky doesn’t even know _himself_ , and it’s  _Steve’s_  fault, the one time in his life he should’ve had his back and he didn’t, and look where it got them—

But he can’t think about that. He can’t go there, there’s no time, he doesn’t have the  _luxury_  to feel bad about himself,  _he has to stay upright._

He realizes he’s been tuning Nat out completely. He tries to pay attention, now, but finds she’s stopped talking altogether. 

He glances back up to her and asks, “are you done?” Which is rude, he realizes a whole second after its left his mouth. He can’t bring himself to care. If she minds, she doesn’t show it. Just shrugs. 

Steve drags his bangs away from his eyes and pools his thoughts together into one simple question; “How much more do I need to know before you let me see him?”

"We still haven’t heard your side of things," says Nat. 

Steve drops his eyes again. Looks at the photo of Bucky for half a second too long then away. He shrugs. He suddenly, deeply wants to project the idea he’s not as upset as he is. “There’s not much to tell,” Steve says. “We ran into each other in Brooklyn, he took me to that derelict, that ‘safe house’. A few hours later all'a you showed up.”

"You forgot the part about the shoplifting." 

Steve’s head jerks up to find Tony up out of his seat, closing the door to their refrigerator. He’s just off to the right of Nat, easy for Steve to hear. He’s got a glass bowl of grapes in his free hand. “And the kinky sex,” Tony continues. He pops a grape into his mouth.

Asshole needed to stay on his left.

Steve pointedly turns his attention back to Nat. Right now, she’s the only one of them he wants to talk to. She’s the one who’s given him the most information with the least amount of bullshit. Steve’s glad Sam's where he is, muted and cut from the conversation, because he likes the guy, but he ain’t got the time for his kindness. 

"Can you tell us how he was acting?" Nat asks.

"Confused," Steve says. Then he pauses and has to think over things, has to take the time to put the half-remembered moments in order. "He was real pushy at first. Thought I wouldn’t follow him if he didn’t throw his weight around." Steve doesn’t mention the piece he pointed at Tony being turned on him first, being pushed into his back while Bucky ordered him to walk. "Then, when we were alone, he…pulled out this flyer. About Captain America. Shoved it under my nose. I didn’t believe him." Steve shakes his head. "It was for some exhibit. I think—I think he’d memorized part of it, cuz he started reciting things, things he should’ve just  _known_. Things about us being friends. Then he…” 

His face had crumpled and his voice had broken in half over the question and Steve has to—he just needs a moment to let the image pass. Bucky’s eyes had been so wide. Steve doesn’t think he can remember a time Bucky ever looked that afraid and  _lost,_  nothing there but naked emotion.

Steve swallows it down, puts the words in order,  _tries_. “He was real messed up over it,” and Steve’s voice is thicker than it has any right to be. He clears his throat. “He said ‘there’s a man with my face. Is he me.’ I told him who he was. I told him he was James Bucky Barnes, and he…after that he calmed down. Trusted me more. Was real quiet and things always took a few seconds to sink in…”

There’s one last thing Steve needs out of this conversation. He looks back to Nat, intent on getting it. “He doesn’t know what happened to him,” Steve says. “He can’t even remember how he got that, that metal arm. He’s not—” he purses his lips, “he’s not  _right_  in he head, but he’s been  _trying_  and he was gonna protect me from you clowns when you—” He’s not sure if he realizes the slip before or after it makes Nat smirk. “Sorry,” he says. That had been uncalled for. Even though he’d meant it.

He likes that Nat doesn’t seem to mind, just asks, “Has he started acting more like himself?”

Steve nods. “Yeah. And I’d know. I know him better than anybody.”

 _Including himself. My fault_. 

Nat nods, leans back on her stool and takes a deep satisfied breath. She’s got what she wanted, Steve thinks. She seems more relaxed. It helps him keep himself relaxed, too. “Well,” Nat says, “it wouldn’t be safe, leaving you two alone together, so you realize we won’t be doing that.” Steve takes it back. He is not relaxed. He is exhausted and so fucking done with this jumping hoops horseshit. Nat turns to look at Tony over her shoulder and says, “tell him about the thing you made.”

Tony’s eyes go comically round for a moment. This is quickly followed by an exaggerated frown. He mutters something Steve doesn’t catch, but clearly amuses Nat, and walks forward, drops his bowl of grapes to the counter and folds his arms, weight on his elbows. The look he gives Steve is serious, or maybe as serious as a guy like Tony can get. The man is a grade-A ham if Steve’s ever saw one. 

"While I can’t exactly give you two my blessing," Tony says, "in fact, I’m withholding my blessing until we’re entirely su—"

"Jesus Christ, would you cut the crap?" Steve says. The other man’s mouth snaps shut. That’s…new, but Steve won’t look a gift horse in the mouth. 

Tony starts again, “I made something for him. Since, yeah, he can’t stay in that cell and he can’t spend all his time out of it wrapped up like Christmas, but he also can’t just walk around like a normal guy until he’s back to  _being_  one, like seriously, that’d be pretty  _stupid_  of us, Steve.” He glares at Steve.

Steve glares back. If this was about anything else, Steve would’ve looked away after a moment—he ain’t like everyone says he is, he  _does_ know how to pick his battles, would be honest to God dead at this point if he didn’t know that much—but it weren’t about anything else, it was about  _Bucky_  and  _Bucky’s treatment_  and Steve ain’t budging on that, even if he’s got no real control over what these people choose to do with them, with both of them. Steve ain’t budging. Steve raises his chin even, looks down his crooked nose at Tony and waits.

Tony works his jaw after a moment, looks like he’s sucking his teeth maybe, before finally giving a wince-like smile and saying, “So. I made something for him. Its really, very simple. It’s like handcuffs, if handcuffs were like bracelets that restrained you.” Tony’s eyes flick to Steve’s left and he quickly amends, not to Steve, but to Sam maybe, or Thor, “I mean they’re—yes, that’s  _what handcuffs are_ , but these are smaller. They’re like—they’re like wristbands. Two wristbands and an anklet and that’s all he has to wear. Free movement until he starts doing anything too Winter Soldier-y, and then they,” Tony slaps his wrists together, "do the restraining." Tony…almost looks like he’s trying to placate Steve, his eyes wide and his eyebrows up and a question to his tone, ‘ _is this good enough_?’ 

Steve ducks his eyes at that, suddenly caught between contrary emotions. Is Tony really trying to be considerate and, if he is, should Steve really be  _grateful?_ Tony and his friends are the ones who decided Bucky had to be restrained in the first place. God, though, Steve’s just not used to it. Guy has all the power in the world over him, doesn’t  _agree_  with Steve clearly, and he’s still trying to make concessions?  _Is_  that what he’s doing? Steve can’t keep it up, he has to look away. 

"Are they ready?" Nat asks. 

"Sure," says Tony, "uh-huh."

"Then you should get them. And get Steve another shirt." 

Steve looks up. Tony is frowning at Nat. “What’s wrong with his shirt?”

...well, fuck, of  _course_ Tony was the one who picked it out. Forget it, Steve thinks he's an asshole. He's just an asshole, it don't matter how much he plays at being nice, he's a goddamn _asshole_.

"We’re trying  _to not_  trigger Barnes," Nat says, "remember?” 

Tony looks at Steve, looks at his chest, at the shield he made him wear, looks back at Nat. Nat inclines her head, expression slipping towards disapproving. Tony scrunches up his face and says, “sonovabitch,” and then, throwing up his hands, “ _fine_. Fine, he’ll get—what. Another button-up, would that work, should we go with that?”

"Probably be more familiar in the way we’re going for," says Nat. "Yes."


	34. 14th Interlude

"He's lost hearing in his left ear."

"He-- _recently?"_

"It must come and go."

"What the hell was that?"

"What?"

"There's being honest, and then there's smacking someone upside the head with a two by four. Made of  _guilt_."

"He wasn't going to hear anything else, Sam. Literally."

"So just get it out there, as blunt as possible. Right. Cuz it's not like he's dealing with enough--no wait, don't tell me. He's Steve, right?  _He can handle it."_

"He was going to argue until one of us said something the way he wanted to hear it. He'd already made up his mind, there's no use dragging it out. Especially not when we're on a deadline."

"Man. Nat, I like you, but you really gotta start thinking less like a spy and more like a friend."

"I'll work on that." 

"...Natasha, Sam, there is one other matter of importance we have forgotten to bring to his attention."

"What do you--oh."

"Aye."

"Oh."

"...we really aren't good at this."


	35. 5:57 am

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> been a while since we've had art in a chapter, I hope y'all like it 8>
> 
> also hey, there's an interlude you may've missed. the 14th one? You should check if you missed that interlude.

The soup’s gone cold and the fat’s all risen to the top in a way that Steve just can’t look at without feeling nauseous. Looks sick to him. Diseased. He knows it’s not, that if they heated it up, it’d stop looking that way, but his stomach’s already made up its mind. He feels awful wasting it, he just wishes it were for someone else. Anyone but him.

He’s just near surly enough to reason, shit, these people can spare a single bowl of soup. They seem about as loaded as they come, it doesn’t matter the bounty, they ain’t likely to blink an eye. No skin off their nose, so why should he care? 

He cares. He’s spent too many nights hungry not to care about letting food go to waste. He just doesn’t care enough to go back to the soup. 

Tony left his grapes, when he went off to get those restraints he made for Bucky. Steve’s pulled the bowl over and eats the remaining berries one at a time. They’re sweet. The taste doesn’t mix well with the coffee, but Steve’s set on finishing his cup. He needs the caffeine. Don’t matter if its cold, and its still good coffee. 

He tries to stick to thinking this stuff, to thinking useless bullshit, to wait—but its hard. Everyone’s left him to himself, and he prefers that, he does, but without others as a distraction, he keeps drifting into dangerous territory he ain’t quite ready to cross.

Eventually the coffee runs out. Then the grapes. He sits there a minute before thinking to take out his sketch paper, but when he goes digging for it, it ain’t in his pocket—ain’t his pocket at all, these are a gifted set of jeans, so a’course its not there. His pencil and paper are still in the pocket of his dirty slacks, and that’s if they hadn’t fallen out somewhere along the way. Fucking stupid. 

He should’ve asked for some clean slacks, that’s what he should’a done. Got enough to deal with, shouldn’t have to sit here looking like a damn okie for anyone’s amusement.

He supposes he could look around, figure out where Sam and Nat and Thor went off to—if they’re just down at the other end of the counter, if they’ve moved to another part of the room, or outright left—but he doesn’t want to give the impression he’s open to any conversation. He doesn’t want Sam tellin’ him its okay when it ain’t, he doesn’t want Nat telling him any more hard truths when he’s full to bursting with 'em already, he doesn’t—

…actually know what Thor would tell him. But he doesn’t want anymore  _weird_ , and Thor is definitely goddamn  _weird_. 

What he’s waiting on is a different shirt—thank god—and Tony’s fancy future-restraints. Then—

Then Bucky, but he’s not gonna think about that.

Its dangerous, thinking of Bucky right now. Dangerous territory. Practically a minefield. Steve can feel it behind his eyes and in the sudden, heavy tightness that overtakes his throat. It’s just a matter of time. It’s just…waiting for the right time, holding out. He can’t do this here. He can wait. He can hold out a little while longer, he knows he can. 

He can’t think about Bucky until then, so he doesn’t, or he tries not to—jackass takes up too much damn space in his life, Steve's thoughts keep bumping into him on accident, and Steve gets that tense rush of emotion for his trouble.

Steve tries to distract himself with the words to a song, but Bucky’s sung all his favorites at him at least once, danced to them, too, made them his own in some way or another, so it don’t take Steve long to find him there.

Steve tries to remember lines from a serial, from the last Warner Brother’s cartoon he was able to catch—he’s real good at remembering those kinds of things, Bucky always asks him to repeat it later—oh fuck. God, he should’a known better, thinking about those cartoons. He always goes with Bucky. Caught the last one with Bucky, who's always been his personal Bugs Bunny, and here his dumbass is, trying  _not_  to think of the guy, going about it in all the worst ways.

Steve tries not to remember jackshit. He sits with his thumbs shoved against his tear-ducts and he focuses on the here and now. The pain of his thumbs pressing hard against his eyes. The buzz in his left ear. The stiffness of the bruises on his throat and sides. The ache in his ass from when Bucky—oh  _god dammit_. 

Steve forces himself up straight, to breathe in deep and to _not_ do what his body and mind seem dead-set on doing, _not_ before its time. The breath gets stuck in his throat when he catches the elevator opening from the corner of his eye. His heart flutters anxiously. He turns.

Its not just Tony in the elevator. There’s a woman with him, thin and pretty with red hair curling ‘round her shoulders. Her bare shoulders, Christ, she looks like all she’s got on for a top is her slip. She’s wearing pants—loose fitting and maybe cotton—and just. He doesn’t know this dame, he doesn’t feel like he should be privy to seeing her like this, in her nightwear, if that’s what this is. 

But she’s looking right at him. He’s about to look away, really, he is, but before he does his eyes sweep back to her face and she’s looking  _right_  at him. Steve looks down and away right before Tony lets loose a snort. Steve tries tucking his bangs back into place. Fuck Tony. At least Steve has some modesty, knows he shouldn’t’ve stared. 

"Excuse him," the woman says, and Steve glances up again without really looking at her. He ends up looking at Tony who’s wandered to the end of the counter—no one else is there, so that’s not where the rest of the Captain’s friends went off to. Tony leans on it, eyes, Steve assumes, on the woman. Steve has the immediate impression that if these two ain’t married, or at least steady, Tony wishes they were. He’s really not subtle. 

Steve makes himself look at the woman, meeting her eyes and _only_ her eyes as he nods to her. “Ma’am,” he says. She was looking at him sadly, but now she smiles, he thinks, with a hint of amusement. 

"You can call me Pepper," she says, and holds out—a shirt, she brought him the shirt. He looks between her and it before finally accepting it, and it’s strange, taking clothes from a gorgeous gal he’s never met. Or—

"You a friend of the Captain’s?" he asks. 

"I’m  _your_  friend,” Pepper says. “Yes.” 

Steve takes in a slow breath, knows he can’t go about correcting her. 

"We’ll get this—all this figured out, Steve," Pepper says. She means it, brow furrowed, head nodding, she really means it. Steve can’t look at her, so he looks at the shirt. It’s white. "We’ll fix it. It’s going to be okay." 

"Thank you, ma’am," he says, then amends, "Pepper." He turns so that when he hops off the stool, he doesn’t knock his knees into her’s or nothing. He looks back up to her and says, "if you’ll excuse me, I should." He raises the shirt a bit.

"Yes. Right, yes, of course," says Pepper.

Steve gives her another nod. It seems like it takes forever to get from there to the bedroom, but he’s not about to run. He’s not about to give anyone reason to think when he closes the door, he’s gonna do what he does. 

Steve closes the door. He walks over to the bed and drops the shirt onto it. He pulls the tee-shirt over his head. He thinks about Bucky.

He cries. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as always you can find more of my art and writing [over at my tumblr.](bluandorange.tumblr.com) Thank you so much for reading


	36. 15th Interlude

"...he just looks awful." 

"He's had a rough night."

"And he really doesn't remember anything?" 

"Nothing past 1943."

"Making him...twenty-four, twenty-five?" 

"Wait, wait, seriously?"

"Yes, Tony, seriously. He was born in 1918, in 1943 he'd be either twenty-four or twenty-five depending on the place in the year. It's simple math."

"...he barely looks _legal._ "

"Please,  _please_ do me a favor and don't say that anywhere he can hear you."

"No, honestly, that's a  _relief._ I mean, do any of us know what the age of consent was in the forties? Cuz I don't. And I wasn't about to ask, _Wilson_ , so. Seriously, I'm not _that_ stupid."

"Good, because I think you're pretty high up on his shit-list already."

"...do I want to know?"

"Not really."

"No."

"He has said nothing you would not be able to guess."

"You're all awful and I hate you. Get out of my house."

"...is it just me or has he been in there a while?" 

"Give him time, its what he needs right now."


	37. 6:21 am

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey so I'm moving a few states this weekend and starting a new job the week after that, so this may be the last update for a while? I mean no promises, I do love writing this, we'll just have to see. But a heads-up anyways. Thanks, y'all, as always, for giving me your time

Steve stands beside Natasha in the elevator, the three restraints Tony made for Bucky in his hand. He tries not to shake. 

He’d tried to make it quick, the—what it was he had to do. He choked back the sounds he could and tried to keep his voice out of the ones he couldn’t, muffling them with the shirt, pressing it tight over his face. He knew how to do it quietly, had some practice with that sort of thing. He tried to just. Just get it all out. Get it out now and hope he would only need to do it the once.

He tried to get it all out, but it felt endless. He realizes later that it always does. It’s just part of it. It feels like it’ll go on for forever, and then it stops. It got to that point, where he was fully and truly overwhelmed, and he felt about ready to fall over. It was too much, and he was shaking, and it  _hurt_ , and it was all his fault. 

His breathing almost became a problem, but it's hard to breathe too fast when you have a bruised larynx. The bruised sides hurt like a sonova, too. In the end, his body wanted to avoid pain more than it wanted to hyperventilate. Small mercies.

He’d pushed on and eventually the tide slowed and he was able to drag himself back away from that place, that feeling. It left him shaky and hollow and feeling very weak.

After he’d changed, he’d checked himself in the bathroom mirror. He was a mess, and he’d tried to do something about it with a few splashes of cold water. Didn’t really pan out. His face was blotchy and his eyes were puffy and red and it’d take more time than he had to do anything about it. 

He already hadn’t wanted to go back out there, but knowing how obvious it’d be to them, what he’d just done, made it much harder.

It was hard to convince himself, at first, to do it anyway, to do it for  _Bucky_ , because he honestly didn’t want to see him, then, either. It was petty and cowardly of him, but he didn’t. He wanted to avoid the guy more than anything, knowing what he knew, knowing what he'd done. 

Only he  _couldn’t_ , he couldn’t stay there and hide, not when there was no one else to take his place. Steve may’ve felt, still feel, like the worst friend in the whole of creation, but it didn’t matter. Bucky wasn’t in any position to be choosey. He deserved better, someone who could repay him, who he could  _actually_ rely on, but who he was stuck with was Steve. And Steve didn’t want to be the shitty friend who put his pride before his pal. As fucking telling as it was, him having to coach himself into being anything  _but_  shitty, he’d go on like being there was what came natural. He wouldn’t let Bucky down. Not again. Not when it was as simple as taking a single elevator ride to look at his fucking face. 

Steve left the bedroom and headed straight for that elevator. “Lessgo,” he’d said. He kept his head lowered, thinking maybe his bangs would shadow the red of his eyes so it wouldn’t be so noticeable. He pressed the call button and glanced over his shoulder. The Captain’s friends were sitting, spread out across three different couches. They were staring at him. Maybe they hadn’t heard him, or maybe they just didn’t take him seriously. “I said,” and he made sure to enunciate, “Lets. Go.”

To his surprise, the first to stand was  _Tony_ , who shot off the couch so fast, he startled Pepper, sitting beside him. Tony looked at his friends and went, “Well? You heard the man,” and motioned towards the elevators with an under-hand sweep of his arms. 

Steve’s knee-jerk was that this was Tony patronizing him, but there was a serious set to the man’s frown that left him wondering otherwise. “Here,” Tony said, once he was close enough to hand something to Steve. “These are them. The handcuffs-but-not-really-handcuffs. For your personal Bucky Bear.”

Steve really hated Tony’s digs about their relationship—shit like this was why he’d made it clear he wanted people to keep seeing them as friends and  _just_  friends. Tony went on to say something about how, when things worked themselves out, the restraints could be used for more ‘happy’ ventures, but Steve wasn’t listening. He was watching the rest of the group around Tony’s shoulder, had looked just in time to catch Pepper and Sam exchange a glance that ended in Sam shaking his head and shrugging. Then Sam looked at Steve and Steve looked away. 

He’d looked down at the bands Tony had handed him. They were thin and maybe only half an inch wide. There were numbers on the clasps, one through three. Tony had told him which went where.

Steve looks at the bands, now, and doesn’t know how to feel. He’s the one who’s expected to put these on Bucky. He thinks he probably prefers it that way, if the alternative were Tony himself, but it still don’t stop him from feeling like a Judas. 

Natasha—Thor called her Natasha as they split up, which, right, is how she’d been introduced to Steve earlier, he’d just forgot—doesn’t say anything. In front of them, between Steve and the doors, is the wall that  _is_  Thor, who’s just as quiet. Steve’s pretty relieved Sam went with Tony and Pepper. He hopes Sam’s telling Tony to shut his fucking pie-hole. He looked like he was gearing up to, when they’d silently decided who’d go where.

Fuck. Steve’s eyes still sting. He rubs at them then sweeps his fingers across his forehead to fix his bangs. He thinks he can feel Natasha looking at him but when he glances her way, she’s got her eyes fixed forward. Probably just being paranoid.

Steve’s just thinking he should’a asked which floor they were going to when suddenly they’re there. The elevator stops and Steve almost drops the bands trying to wipe the sweat from his palms and onto his jeans. 

He realizes, stepping out, he barely remembers the place. Vague details he knows—the room was bright, the cell was glass, Bucky was restrained and miserable looking—but the rest felt hazy, dream-like. He’d been real out of it, before. Thor moves to the side, letting Steve pass as he takes in the room and—

Bucky’s looking right at him. 

He’s still wrapped tight in those weird nets what took him down, bound from foot to shoulder. He’s still leaning, propped up on one of the glass walls. He’s still so  _wrong_  in so many ways, from the metal inlaid against his left collarbone to the long hair and scruff, but he’s also  _conscious_  and alert and looking at Steve with wide, expectant eyes. 

Steve’s suddenly caught between two opposing desires; to run back into the elevator and run right into the cell. Cowardice or longing. For a moment they’re both so strong, he’s stuck, he’s frozen in place, unable to pursue either, unable to think of anything else. 

Someone says his name and the cell door—practically invisible, made to look like part of the glass walls, just wide enough for someone like Thor to pass through—slides upward into the ceiling and that’s it. He doesn’t need anything else, he’s moving. 

His heart is pounding and he’s light headed as all shit, but he’s moving. 

"Steve," Bucky says, and Steve has to drop the bands to get his hands on Buck’s shoulders, to keep the moron from leaning too far and knocking himself over. 

"Yeah," Steve says. Bucky lets out a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sigh and ducks his head, trying to press his forehead to Steve’s forearm. Steve kneels beside him. He’s propped up on his heels, putting them more or less at the same height. He shifts his hand from Bucky’s shoulder to his cheek, since it seems like what the guy wants is contact, and he shouldn’t have to go out of his way to get it.

"Was worried," Bucky says, like its a confession. He looks Steve’s way before his eyes drop closed and he turns and burrows his face into Steve’s palm. Makes Steve’s heart flutter, to be honest. And then he’s kissing his palm and Steve feels his own breath catch. 

What the _holy hell_  does he think he’s doing?

Bucky’s riding the line between his usual affectionate self and something far more intimate, someplace they’ve never dared to go, and right now? Seriously?  _Right now_.

Bucky meets Steve’s eyes again and slowly his lips turn up in a smile. “Pink,” he says. Steve realizes he’s talking about Steve’s cheeks. 

"Shuddup," Steve says. It comes out hoarse. 

Bucky  _smirks_  and that’s it, Steve can’t take it, he pushes the jerk’s head away. Bucky sits back with a breathy laugh. “‘s a good look for you, Rogers,” he says. “Rosy cheeks are a sign of good health.” Its familiar and still not quite  _right_ , but  _familiar_  and—

Steve looks him up and down and turns up his nose. “Hate to break it to you, Barnes, but y’can’t really pull off ‘smooth’ when you’ve got slick dried in your hair.” Which he does. To prove it, Steve reaches over and rolls one dried clump of hair between his forefinger and thumb. It crackles as he works the strands apart. 

Bucky goes still with surprise and then frowns. “Your fault,” he says. Steve finds it in him to smirk, cuz he ain't wrong, but then his eyes drop down to Buck’s neck and his smile fades. The hickeys he’d thought he’d sucked into Bucky’s throat and shoulder aren’t there anymore. It—that’s not right, it throws him off balance. Is this really, is all this--

Someone clears their throat. 

Steve could kick himself over how fast his head whips around. Not only does it make his neck ache, the bruised muscles cramping near-instantly, but he must look like a right fool. As he meets Tony’s eyes, he tries to tell himself he’s nothing to be ashamed of. And even if he does, its not got a damn thing to do with any of the Captain’s friends loitering around to watch.

Tony and Natasha are standing inside the cell, near the door. Thor, Sam and Pepper hang back. Thor whispers something to Pepper that makes Sam’s head whip around fast. Steve puts his attention back to Tony and his ugly fucking grin. 

"I’m ‘bout to have Jarvis disable those restraints," Tony says. "So—"

"Good," Steve says, pointedly cutting him off. "Do it." 

"Well, sure, yeah," says Tony, "but  _when I do_ , if you’d be so kind as to…” He motions at the bands on the floor beside Steve, then to Bucky. 

Steve sighs. “Fine.” He glances at Bucky—who looks confused in that odd, detached way Steve hopes he’ll never have to get used to—then directs a glare back up at Tony. “Just do it.” 

Like the asshole he is, Tony makes good on his word with a snap of his fingers. Steve turns back to Bucky and watches in horrified wonder as the restraints  _move_ , unlocking from one side and snapping back across the other, like mechanized belts. It forms into two long, thick braids, one sitting on Bucky’s front and another behind him that quickly falls, unsupported, to the floor. He and Bucky both stare, too enthralled and, in Steve’s case, terrified to move. 

Then its over. It stops moving and Steve knocks the front piece off Bucky’s lap and then kicks it to make sure the whole of it drops to the floor. The action brings him just about on top of Bucky, who doesn’t waste the closeness, he wraps his arms around Steve and pulls them chest to chest in a tight hug, Steve straddling his lap. Bucky presses his face against Steve’s shoulder and Steve hugs him back. 

"I was worried," Bucky says, again. He stinks of stale sweat. "You—they didn’t—you were okay?"

"I—Sure," Steve says, and he can’t help it if he sounds surprised. His fingers tighten against the hard muscles of Bucky’s back. "Christ, Bucky, yes." He tries to laugh around the lump in his throat, tries to make light, "Don’t be such’a Patsy. Really, what kind of moron spends  _six hours_  in a cell and the first thing he wants t’know is if the guy on the  _outside_  is doing okay?” 

"I didn’t know if you were  _safe_ ,” Bucky says. A shiver goes through Steve, up his spine, hits him right between the eyes. Bucky holds him tighter. “They said you were, but I didn’t  _know_.”

"I’m okay," Steve says. "I’m okay."


	38. 6:33 am

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> y'all. y'all I think I really underestimated how much I want to write this fic.

1; Right wrist,

2; Left wrist,

3; Left ankle. 

Steve picks half heartedly through the three bands until he finds the one for Bucky’s flesh-and-blood arm. 

"I’m only doing this," he says, "because it’s the only way they'd agree to let you out." 

"…what. What are they?" Bucky asks. He struggles through each word, a strange fear in his eyes as he looks at the bands. Steve feels deeply disgusted with himself.

"They’re…I guess they’re like handcuffs." 

Bucky nods. His frown—Steve doesn’t know what to do with that goddamn frown. If Bucky were angry or put-out, Steve would have something to work with. This frown, though, it has him at a loss. It’s just—it’s so goddamn  _vulnerable_. The only thing Steve wants to do is put himself between Bucky and anyone looking, to keep him covered until he can pull himself together, but shit,  _shit,_  he ain’t even trying. He’s just looking at the the bracelet in Steve’s hands with open…open and naked worry. 

It makes him look so very young. 

"Look," Steve starts, "its not—its not gonna be for long. They think you need these, but you don’t, so." He takes Bucky’s hand, the one he was born with, and pulls it into his own lap. Bucky squeezes Steve’s fingers. Steve doesn’t let go; he squeezes back. "So. Once they realize that, these won’t be a problem anymore." 

"I don’t need them," Bucky repeats. It’s so quiet and neutral, Steve can’t tell if its a question or an affirmation. He pretends its a question. 

"No, you don’t. You’re not a menace." 

While Bucky chews on that—and he’s definitely chewing, Steve can see it in the set of his brows, though Lord knows _why_  or  _what_  there is to chew over—Steve takes a breath and pulls his hand free, leaving Bucky’s resting in his lap. He parts the first band where Tony’d showed him and clips it closed around Bucky’s wrist.

When a few seconds have passed and the band hasn't done anything awful, they both start breathing again.

"These…will keep me from doing harm?" Bucky asks as Steve pulls the metal hand forward. 

"Well, its not like y'll do any harm in the  _first_  place, right, knucklehead?” 

Bucky fixes Steve with a look, and while Steve can read it just fine, it ain’t any look he’s used to. Bucky’s got a thousand different ways of telling Steve he’s full of shit without having to say a word, and somehow this one is new. It’s that vulnerability again. Buck should be so much better at guarding himself. He’s not even trying to right now. Steve wishes he would at least  _try_. 

"You  _won’t_ ,” Steve says. 

"I have," Bucky says. He lifts the metal wrist and offers it to Steve. His hand's in a fist. Steve's looking at the serrated edges where his veins should be. 

Then Steve sits back on his heels, feeling his cheeks flush from anger. “Oh, so now you  _want_  to wear these?” 

"Yes," Bucky says. 

"Bucky," Steve says—and he hates himself, he shouldn’t be doing this, and Bucky sure as hell shouldn’t be  _agreeing_  to it—he waves the next bracelet in his fist, “I don’t even know what these  _do_!” 

"I could help with that," Tony says, behind him. 

"Shut the hell up," Steve says, faster than he can think. His patience is shot, he can’t bring himself to care. He doesn’t take his eyes off Bucky’s. They stare each other down.

The anger inside Steve grows to fill his whole chest, because there’s no fire behind Buck’s eyes at all. There’s no determination, there’s no stubborn set to his jaw, there’s nothing but want, bare and fragile, as Bucky lifts his wrist higher. “Please,” Bucky says. 

What ring of Hell is this and which one of Steve’s numerous sins was it that landed him here?

Steve swallows down embers. “Fine,” he says. “Here.” He snaps the cuff in place then makes a sharp gesture at Bucky’s leg. “Left ankle.” Buck pulls his left knee up until his foot—bare, just like Steve’s—is well within Steve’s reach. Steve snaps the last band into place and shakes his head. “I’m never letting you give me shit about being a martyr ever again. This--really, Barnes, takes the cake.” 

"I don’t want to hurt you again," Bucky says, softly. Steve stares past him, through the glass, to the other wall, because there’s no way in hell he could survive seeing whatever look Bucky’s giving him now. 

"Only proving my point, Buck," Steve says. He pushes himself to his feet and turns. "We clear, warden?" Steve asks Tony. There’s a pull to Tony’s lips that makes Steve think, hope, he’s starting to get under the guy’s skin. Tony takes a step to the side and motions at the open door.

While Tony likely has plenty he’s want to say, Steve turns his bad ear to him when he looks back at Bucky. Buck’s already on his feet, looking first to Steve, then past him to the five strangers, four of which responsible for his capture. For keeping them both here against their will. 

Bucky’s gaze comes to rest on one of them and his lips turn up in the faintest smile. Steve pivots to figure out who's it for--his mind goes immediately to Pepper and her slip-top, and he wonders if this is the watered down version of the smile Bucky gets around especially pretty dames, the one that means his mind is turning over what to say to get her to share his time--and finds the one he's looking at is Natasha. She’s inclining her head to Bucky with a small smile of her own. 

"James," she says. "This is Tony. That’s Thor, Pepper," she motions casually to each person as she introduces them, "and you’ve met Sam." 

"When?" Bucky asks. He tilts his head, considering Sam openly, if...wrong. Definitely wrong. Steve can't remember Bucky looking at anyone that way in his life.

"Uh, DC. Anacostia Freeway," Sam says. If he finds Bucky’s gaze unnerving—which Steve does, but maybe it’s cuz he knows the guy too well—he doesn’t show it. "There were some things you did to my car. Then we met again, later, on the Helicarriers. I was the guy with the wings."

Steve looks between them, settling on Bucky just as Bucky slowly begins to nod. He hasn’t taken his eyes off Sam. “You were covering Steve,” Bucky says. 

Sam nods, lips pursed and quirked up at the ends. “I was.” 

"I don’t remember  _any_  of this,” Steve half-mutters to Bucky. 

"I know," Bucky says. His eyes finally flick back down to Steve. His face is near-neutral, but his eyes are still so very... "Natasha told me." 

"…When did she tell you?" Steve asks. 

"A few hours ago." 

Steve looks at Natasha. “You were asleep,” she says, “so I kept him company.”

Steve isn’t sure if she’d neglected to tell him this, or if she had told him, and he’d gone and forgotten it on account of being so severely in over his head. "Nice of you," he says. He doesn't know Nat all that well, but he'd bet his last nickle she hadn't done it outta any worry for Bucky feeling lonely.

"These are your friends," Bucky says slowly. Its clear he's seeking confirmation.

Steve shrugs, eyes glancing off to the side. “That’s what they tell me,” he says. He wishes they were alone, so he could tell him the truth. 


	39. 6:44 am

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hahahaha now I just feel silly warning y'all about the move. none'a y'all are complaining tho right? yeah me either

When Steve was seventeen, he took a job delivering groceries to an old queen who lived in the Hotel St George.

Bucky was against it from the start. He knew what kind of men lived up in that hotel and, though he’d sworn up and down sins like that were between a man and his maker and nobody else, he thought it was a stupid idea, Steve agreeing to go around there on his own. It was before Bucky knew what Steve was, back when queers were people they didn’t talk to or about, just people to pray for on Sunday.

"Some dame should take the job," Bucky’d said. "Safest job in all’a Brooklyn, for a dame."

"We need the money, Bucky," Steve said. Steve’s ma was staying home from work more and more, and between the expense of living and the expense of keeping an invalid as a son, they wouldn’t have two dimes to rub together come winter, if Steve didn’t find himself a job somewhere. "And there ain’t a lotta jobs out there for a fella like me. I gotta take what I can get."

What he didn’t say was there was no point’a fearing being around a fairy when he was one himself. 

Steve applied the next day, while Bucky was working. That was when he met Charlie for the first time. Charles ‘call-me-Charlie’ Aggett was about as willowy as Steve but far more kind and with no temper to speak of. Took a shine to Steve right away. Steve hadn’t said anything, not at first, but he sure to this day that Charlie knew him for what he ways. The moment Steve stepped into his apartment, Charlie knew that they had more than just a Catholic upbringing in common. 

Charlie was the first person Steve ever told about Bucky,  _really_  told about Bucky. He couldn’t avoid it, not after the first time Bucky tailed him to St George and sweet talked his way into Charlie’s parlor. Again, Charlie knew right away, didn’t say a thing in front of Bucky, just made nice and ‘set a good example for the rest’ as he’d say, but he saw the way they were and he knew. Bucky left feeling less apprehensive about Steve’s employer. Steve returned the next day with Charlie’s groceries and was asked point-blank how long he planned on acting like he wasn’t head-over-heels for his best friend. 

Steve never wanted to have that conversation. True, it was killing him, pretending like he only saw Bucky as a friend, but he knew he’d outright die if coming clean meant losing him for good. Charlie read him like a book that day, over a cup of coffee Steve couldn’t bring himself to touch. He named every one of Steve’s fears and then some. Charlie said he knew a thing or two about the sort of pain Steve was in. Said he’d had a ‘Bucky’ of his own, once. Said he liked Steve, in fact he liked him a lot, and he didn’t want to see Steve go making the same mistakes as him, not if he could help it.

"Keep bringing him around," Charlie said. "We’ll work on your boy, you and me. With a little time, we’ll figure out where your chances lie."

Three weeks later, Charlie looked Steve dead in the eye and said, “if you don’t kiss that boy soon, I’m never letting you up here again.”

At that point, Bucky liked Charlie fine—liked that Charlie fed Steve after most every delivery even more—but what he loved about Steve’s job was riding up to Charlie’s apartment in the automated, Otis elevator. It was about the only elevator either of them had been in their whole lives and Bucky thought it was swell. Every trip left him with a smile. According to Buck, it was the same kind model elevator they had at the Empire State building; no operator, you just pressed a button and it took you to that floor lickity-split.

The next time Bucky went with Steve up to Charlie’s, when they were alone in that elevator headed up to the 16th floor, Steve set down his groceries and told Bucky to bend down for him, his collar needed fixing and it was starting to grate Steve's nerves. Bucky either saw it coming or he didn’t. Either way, when he bent low, Steve grabbed him by the lapels and kissed him on the mouth. A second later Bucky kissed Steve back. 

They both had reason to like elevators after that. 

Steve has no earthly idea why Bucky looks so terrified to step into one, now.

They’re supposed to be heading back to “Steve’s” floor, once again splitting up between the elevators—Pepper, Tony, Thor; Sam, Steve, Bucky, Nat—but Bucky won’t budge, just keeps looking inside, eyes darting from one corner of the cab to the next to the next. 

Steve’s called his name twice now and gotten no response at all. 

Steve steps back out of the elevator and takes ahold of Bucky’s hand. Bucky breathes in sharp through his nose, jerking at the contact, but at least it gets him looking at Steve. 

"Easy," Steve says, "hey, easy. Its just an elevator, Buck. Nothin’ scary ‘bout an elevator." 

Bucky furrows his brow, like what Steve's said ain't right. He doesn’t look away, though. His hand goes from rigid to slowly curling around Steve’s, returning the hold. He takes quick, uneven breaths through his mouth, and it reminds Steve of a child who wants to cry but knows it’d get them a scolding, so they’re trying very hard to calm down. Steve tries not to wonder how many years Bucky's been like this, been reduced to this and just undone.

"You like elevators," Steve says, "remember? You’d use up your whole lunch break just to ride the one at Charlie’s. You remember Charlie. I know you do. And we had to take the elevator up to his apartment—there weren’t no way I’d get up  _sixteen_ flights of stairs, not with all those groceries.” Steve ducks his head to Buck and forces a smile at that, like he’s told a joke. Bucky’s breathing has quieted and he’s starting to relax around the brow and jaw. Bucky closes his mouth and nods. “Yeah, see, I knew you'd know. That was your favorite thing.” Bucky nods again, eyes slipping closed, drawing a deeper breath. 

Ignoring Natasha and Sam at his back, Steve steps in and drops his voice. “We had a lotta fun in that elevator, Buck. Didn’t we?” He raises his eyebrows, watching Bucky expectantly. Bucky’s lips part while he thinks on that. Steve doesn’t know if he really remembers or not, but there’s no mistaking the way Buck starts looking between Steve’s eyes and his lips, so at least he’s figured out the sort of ‘fun’ Steve's on about. “Yeah,” Steve says, practically for him, “yeah we did. Though we ain’t riding this one alone, so don’t go getting any funny ideas.” Bucky starts to nod and then thinks better of it and shakes his head. It’s almost cute, almost funny. Its childish as hell and makes Steve's guts twist and turn with guilt.

Steve makes himself focus on just assessing how Buck's doing. He seems much calmer. Steve decides to give him one more push. "It’s at _least_  sixteen floors between here and where we’re going, and if you think I’m letting you outta my sight, you’ve got another thing coming, so,” Steve gives Bucky’s hand a squeeze, “lets take the elevator.” 

Bucky’s nod is solid and sure this time around. Steve pulls him by the hand toward the cab, and there’s a moment where Bucky pauses just outside it and Steve thinks he’ll have to do some more sweet talking to get him beyond the threshold, but then the moment passes and Buck takes two more steps to stand in front of Steve, back to the door as it closes.

Bucky keeps his eyes on Steve the whole ride, so Steve keeps his on Bucky’s. Bucky’s hand tightens around his, loosens, tightens, rhythmic like a slow and steady heartbeat. The ride seems to go on a long time, but whenever Steve’s mind starts slipping back toward the minefield, that dangerous territory full of all the things whats gone wrong, Bucky’s hand will move in his and ground Steve in the present. Ain’t nothing across the minefield what would do either of them any good, anyhow. What Steve needs is surer footing. Steve has to remain upright.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there's now [a comic](http://bluandorange.tumblr.com/post/100220050380/based-on-a-scene-from-my-fic-turn-back-the-clock) of Steve and Bucky's first kiss so I mean 8'> May be something you'd like to see


	40. 16th Interlude

"Well, they're _obviously_ in love. Don't you think?"

"Aye. And the Sergeant is far more affectionate than expected. Anthony, I feel we should allow them the privacy they deserve."

"Uh, that's because you're a big softy."

"Tony, Thor's right. Now, wait, you know Jarvis will be monitoring them the whole time and Barnes has on those cuffs you made him--I don't see why they can't be one whole room away. They don't need all of us breathing down their necks every second until Steve's back to normal."

"So you're tapping out then? What floor should we let you out on? Is it any of the ones coming up because you should really say something now--"

"I am  _not_ tapping out. No. I have a meeting in two hours and until then, I plan on being around for this. Someone has to do damage control for that mouth of yours and Sam, bless him, needs a  _break_."

"I'll have you know I've been very nice, if...protective. For good reason." 

"I doubt Steve sees it that way. That and your version of 'nice' is still _very_ off-color. Tony, you suggested they use those restraints for  _sex._ I  _heard_ you."

"I don't--how was that not nice? I was showing support! Of their--of their relationship where previously I had been, y'know, less than supportive." 

"Tony. Tony, no."


	41. 6:48 am

Drinking that coffee on a practically empty stomach is coming back to bite him in the ass. There’s a multitude of little pains stitched through Steve’s body and now, because he turned his nose up at some goddamn soup, he can add ‘burning ache in abdomen’ to the top of the pile. 

Something must show on his face because before he can start bargaining for some privacy, Pepper asks if he’s alright. Steve pushes down the irritation and schools his expression somewhere lighter. “I’m fine,” Steve says. Christ, he hasn’t even been out of the elevator a full thirty seconds, she’s asking this. 

"Have you taken any Tylenol?" Pepper asks. "Aspirin?" Steve shakes his head, opens his mouth to reiterate the whole ‘fine’ thing, but she continues, polite if firm. "There should be some in the master bathroom." She gets maybe two steps that direction before Tony makes a ‘uhh’ noise. She turns back his way. "What?"

"Super-soldier suite," Tony says. While Steve doesn’t immediately catch on, Pepper seems to. Her shoulders droop before she shifts gears, putting a finger to her mouth, her mind probably already working on an alternative. 

"Its fine," Sam says. "I’ve got some in my pack."

"Really," Steve says, "I’m good." 

"Take the medicine," Bucky says. Steve turns to frown at him. Bucky frowns back. "You don’t have to be in pain."

"I’m  _fine_.”

"Pretty sure you’re outnumbered," Sam says lightly. He crosses past the both of them and motions for them to follow. "C’mon, it won’t take a second." 

Steve frowns, almost digs his heels in, but Bucky tugs on his hand and Steve has to keep pace or else be pulled bodily toward the bedroom. He knows its nothing to make a scene about and so lets himself be led, not fucking  _dragged._

He’s a little surprised when Sam’s ‘pack’ turns out to be in the bedroom.

"…this is Steve’s apartment," Bucky says. Sam looks up from the duffle he’s digging in, set to rest on the bed where Steve woke up two, maybe three hours ago, and nods. Bucky continues, "This is Steve’s bedroom."

"Yeah," Sam says. He’s got a slight smile Steve hasn’t seen before and he’s looking at Buck from the corner of his eye almost curiously. Like he’s trying to see if he’ll figure it out. His eyes shift to Steve and—

Christ, he has to be kidding. 

"Your things are in Steve’s bedroom," Bucky says, tone still nothing but neutral. 

"Bucky," Steve says, turning to him, "go shower." Bucky blinks slowly once, twice, brows knitting. He hasn’t reached upset—assuming upset is where he’s even headed—and instead continues looking confused. Steve keeps pushing. He doesn’t think he could have this conversation with Bucky around. "You stink," Steve says. He takes his hand away to shove at Bucky’s normal arm. "Go, its right through there, its got hot water and everything." 

Bucky lingers another second before doing as he’s told, shutting the bathroom door behind him. Steve turns back to Sam who seems to be somewhere between extremely amused and guilty. Steve’s disbelief must show because Sam’s amusement eases away. Sam shrugs. 

"You didn’t think you were the only gay superhero, did you?"

"You said you were a normal guy," Steve says. 

"A normal guy like you."

Steve swallows, looks away, looks back again. “We’re together?” 

"It’s more of a casual thing," Sam says, "but yeah." 

Steve takes a moment to process that. He’s never known a black invert, though he guesses he should’ve expected they were  _out_ there. Sam just didn’t look the type. Well, no, that didn’t matter much; neither had Bucky. And, as the Captain, he guesses he wouldn't really, either. Shaking his head, he decides its not something he should feel thrown over. Sam’s business is his business, it just…

For some reason included Steve. 

"How’d we…?" 

"Start?" Sam finishes. He laughs. "Well, me? I was minding my own business. Then you came in, batting those long lashes at my work, during my morning jog…"

"You could’ve told me to get lost," Steve says, trying to fight back the flush creeping up his neck. He tries to picture himself openly hitting on someone like Sam, right out of the blue. A second before Sam replies, he realizes it wouldn’t have been him at all; it would’ve been Captain America. 

"The funny thing is," Sam says, "I  _did_.” He raises a hand as if stop Steve’s thoughts before they get going. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I liked you, but I could tell you were looking for things I couldn’t give you.” His smile is fond, understanding, and hits Steve deeper now that he knows there’s more behind it than just friendship. Steve swallows but doesn’t look away. Sam looks to the bathroom door, nods to it and looks back at Steve. “I couldn’t be Bucky,” he says. Then he shrugs, like that wasn’t a kick right to Steve’s heart. Like it doesn’t hurt realizing he’s that fucking transparent. “It’s not the kind of baggage I can handle, that’s just me. You took it just fine. We had a good night and, y’know, you said you’d keep in touch.” His smile becomes a little more playful. “I hadn’t expected that to mean you’d show up and pull me feet first into all your superhero bullshit, but I didn’t turn you down for it either.” His eyes drift to the door again as he says, “after that, we started looking for your boy.” 

Steve has a question thats burning the back of his throat. He tries to keep it down, to talk himself out of it, but he wants to know. He’s selfish and he wants to know. “Are you jealous?” 

Sam smiles wide, closes his eyes and shakes his head like he thinks Steve is something else. “No. No, man, what I am is happy for you.” Steve’s shoulders ache from trying to stay tall and still. “I didn’t know what was gonna happen when we found him, I didn’t know how much of him was even  _left_ , and believe me; that’s one thing I’m more than happy to be wrong about.”

Steve nods. He’s sure he has more questions, sure he has more he could say at all, but he’s drawing a blank, can’t come up with the words. He doesn’t want to say he’s shocked, but maybe that’s exactly what he is. 

This whole time, there really was something between him and Sam. 

No, there was something between Sam and the Captain and…well, it doesn’t really matter where that leaves Steve. He has Bucky to look after and a crush Steve has on a stranger who fell for some perfect version of him—its just too messy. 

"Steve," Sam says. Steve hadn’t realized he was looking at the foot of the bed until right then. He looks back up and finds Sam’s expression has changed. He’s concerned. "There’s something else that hasn’t really come up. It’s about the spell on you. It’s not permanent." 

Steve must be numb to this shit at this point because he barely has it in him to look surprised. 

"It’s gonna end in a few hours, and then you’re gonna…change back."

"Y’couldn’t’ve told me this earlier?" Steve asks. It still hasn’t hit. 

Sam looks away with a wince, then back. “We really should have. We’re apparently shit at this.”

"No kidding." 

"In my defense," Sam says, "this is my first time dealing with magical fallout." Steve can tell he’s half-joking. Its strange, out of everything, what throws him the most is being treated this way by someone besides Bucky. Someone talking to him casual and easy, like his company is valuable. He’s under a spell, a spell that’s apparently almost over, but being treated  _nice_  is the part what seems impossible.


	42. 17th Interlude

"…wait, where are they going?"

"Steve’s bedroom it looks like."

"Why would Wilson’s pack be in Stev— _oh my god_.”

"What? Tony. Tony, its not a big deal."

"Oh my god,  _no one tells me anything_.” 

"Why would we tell you anything when this is how you react."

"I AM—I am reacting this way because  _no one tells me anything_ , and I’m. I’d been under the impression that Wilson was at least nice enough to say ‘hey, you know that floor you gave me, I won’t be needing it, I’m actually star-spangled banging—’”

"There is no way he’d say it like that."

"And Sam does use his floor. We had coffee there the other morning." 

"They still don’t need to sneak around!" 

"They aren’t. They just didn’t tell  _you_.” 

"Okay so you knew? So we’re back to the issue of _no one telling me anything!"_


	43. 7:10 am

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so I post what I have of each chapter on tumblr like as they happen and stuff. And this chapter went through like four drafts. For those curious about where things might have gone, feel free to check the notes at the end for links

"Stay back.  _Hey_ , I  _mean_  it _._ " 

It all happened so quick, Steve still isn’t sure what to think. 

Right now, he stands between the Captain’s friends and Bucky, palms up and outstretched to face the former, not that Steve could rightly expect to stop anyone if they really felt like getting past him. Steve doesn’t know what to do, but he does know he’s not about to let them cart Bucky back off to that cell for something that wasn’t even his fault. He’ll claw their damn eyes out first. 

His head is pounding arrhythmically, fast and heavy thanks to the new shock of adrenaline in his bloodstream. It makes it hard to think straight, everything swirls hot with anger one second and chills through with fear the next. Steve forces himself to take deep breaths in through his nose and keep his eyes on group at the door. 

Behind him, the shower’s still running. The change of clothes Sam helped him pick out for Bucky are in a pile on the sink, folded right where Steve left them. A fan’s kicked on somewhere and thank God. Steve’s not real keen on passing out again and he’s already sweating bullets from how muggy the bathroom’s gotten. The air’s still plenty hot, plenty heavy, but its moving, so so’s he. 

"Okay," Natasha says, showing Steve empty palms. "We’ll stay back, just. Tell us what happened." 

Oh, sure. Because Steve isn’t still trying to figure that out for himself.

He has no idea how he’d managed to screw up something so simple. ‘Get Bucky to come out of the shower’, how the holy Hell had he managed to cause  _that_  to go FUBAR? 

It happened so fast, he’d just. He’d gone in to check on Bucky, mostly to get away from Sam, and found Buck staring off into space under the shower-head. Talking to him hadn’t done a damn thing so Steve’d emptied his arms, leaving the change of clothes on the counter, and came closer, barely made it into the stall before Bucky whipped around quick as a snake and made a grab for him.

The rest of it happened in the next few seconds, maybe less than that.

Bucky’s hand wrenched back, he doubled over, lightning coursed over his metal arm and then spiderwebbed across the wet tile of the bathroom when Bucky collapsed. Bucky screamed and went still. 

Steve had just missed being electrocuted, too, by how much he’s not sure. He wasn’t touching the water. 

Bucky’s breathing. Steve keeps glancing at him to make sure he hasn’t stopped, keeps glancing and hoping Bucky’s eyes will open on their own. 

He just has no good goddamn idea what to do anymore. 

A part of him is screaming that Bucky needs help, that he should let the other’s  _help_ , that its not like Steve can do anything, he’s wasting time, he’s less than useless. That part just ain't as big or as loud as the part of him that’s afraid, so he hasn’t given in to it yet. He doesn’t trust them. Not with Bucky. Not after this.

Steve looks back at Bucky, limbs loose but still locked, both wrists against one ankle. Three metal bands touching. He looks back and sneers. “Your goddamn  _restraints_  happened.”

That’s what it had been, hadn’t it? They were there to stop Bucky from going at Steve, and he’d gone at Steve and wound up bound on the floor. Not just bound. Worse.  _Electrocuted_ , why the  _fuck_ —

At Steve’s words, Tony goes pale, eyes wide as he steps back against the door frame. “ _Sssshit_.” To his credit, he looks horrified with himself. Everyone else is looking between Tony and Steve. 

Thor rips his eyes away from Bucky—‘rips’ because it looks like it physically pains him to do it—as he puts a hand on Tony’s shoulder. Tony jerks liked a spooked cat then stills. “Anthony,” Thor says, “can you fix this?” 

Tony looks to Thor and then back past Steve to Bucky. “Jarvis; turn off the restraints.” It comes out neutral but breathless. 

Steve turns back ‘round to Bucky; his wrists are now lying limply on the floor. 

Steve’s at his side a breath later, trying to pull him up, trying to get him propped against the shower wall. “Bucky,” he says. He’s hot everywhere Steve touches and he’s all dead weight. Over two hundred pounds of wet, slippery dead weight. No, more than that. The metal arm’s gone loose, every panel relaxed in a way that makes it look long, skinny and unnatural. Steve can’t even lift that side of him, there’s no way he’s moving him anywhere on his own. Steve grits his teeth—the most he can do is put himself behind Buck and cradle his head in his lap. So that’s what he does. “Bucky,” Steve says again. He pushes the wet hair away from his friend’s face, traces the line of damp cheeks with his thumbs. 

He just looks asleep, he’s gotta be alright, he’s  _gotta be_. 

Steve has a moment of clarity and thinks to press his fingers to Buck’s neck to check his pulse. He almost sobs in relief when he finds it steady. Fast, but steady. 

"Okay, Buck. Okay. You’re okay." 

A shadow falls over Bucky’s legs and Steve looks up. Sam's at the door to the stall. The rest have stayed behind, still watching from the doorway. Steve’s panic twists back into anger. “What’re you lookin’ at—this ain’t a  _show_. Get lost or I’ll start charging!” 

"Go," Sam says, turning to the others. "I got this." Steve prickles, not sure what to think and too on edge to take Sam’s kindness at face value. Sam turns back to him and kneels down. For a long second, they just look at each other. "Steve," Sam says, "I just want t’help. You know you gotta get him out and dried off somehow." There’s no smile to him now, he’s sincere and respectful and not sugar coating a word. And what's more, he’s right. 

Steve drags his wet fingers over his eyes, like that’ll hide anything. “Okay,” he says. “Okay, so help.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah so, this was almost a whole chapter of dicking around while [Bucky shaved](http://bluandorange.tumblr.com/post/92123490330/continuation-of-turn-back-you-look-tired) and [Steve dressed him.](http://bluandorange.tumblr.com/post/91534424440/continuation-of-turn-back-steve-noticed-it)
> 
> Wouldn't that just've been _awful?_


	44. 18th Interlude

"Tony; listen to me. This wasn't your fault."

"No,  _this_ is what I get for being  _nice_. I should've--did  _anyone_ know he was going into the shower? They were supposed to be getting Steve some frickin' pills! I most definitely could've prevented this but  _no one tells me anything_ , and  _Steve_ won't listen in the first damn place!"

"Did the restraints malfunction?" 

"Yes. No, yes. Possibly. The left one was 'sposed to immobilize the metal arm--"

"An EMP?"

"Yes, Thor, an EMP. It wasn't all that precise, it wasn't exactly ready to go for a _swim_ and I dunno if you noticed, but I forgot to give Jarvis protocols in case someone was dumb enough to--. Dammit, I should--I would have _warned_ them, I was  _going to--_ "

" _Tony._ "

"In my defense, I had, like, four hours. Should've just made some reinforced cuffs--I was  _trying_ to be nice." 


	45. 7:16 am

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FFFFFUCK YES WELCOME BACK DEARIES. Seriously, I'm so glad I finally got this chapter done uuuggghh. I've had some serious anxiety issues re: continuing this story and hopefully now we can just move forward and not have that bullshit hinder us for a good while. Thank you for coming back after almost two months of nothing. It's always a pleasure to have you and thank you as always for reading.
> 
> For those who don't follow [my tumblr](bluandorange.tumblr.com), I recently [finished a comic](http://bluandorange.tumblr.com/post/100220050380/based-on-a-scene-from-my-fic-turn-back-the-clock) based on Steve and Bucky's first kiss, from chapter 39. May be up your alley 8>a

Steve can count the number of times he’s seen Bucky sick on one hand. Just glimpses, caught in windows and doorways, because Bucky hadn’t wanted Steve catching nothing from him, neither had Buck’s ma, or Steve’s ma for that matter. Catchin’ something didn’t bother Steve much—he was always sick, was gonna  _get_  sick whether he was watched close or not—there was just no arguing with any one’a ‘em, let alone all three. If he managed to get out his own door, he’d just wind up gettin’ turned away at Buck’s. 

Usually he only got to help Bucky if he was laid up from a fight. Almost every fight a Bucky’s started out as a fight a Steve’s, so it only seemed fair, Steve looking after him if things didn’t go his way. 

First time he played Bucky’s nursemaid, it weren’t from a fight at all; Bucky’d fallen off the fire escape at Steve’s, broke an arm and two ribs and stayed there, in Steve’s room, for the next several days. If not for Steve’s ma, Bucky would’ve been in bad shape. She set him straight, though, and put Steve in charge while she was away at work.

He and Buck had only been friends for a year at that point, they were still real little, and Steve’s bossy streak was already longer than the East River and twice as wide. Bucky knew that, was usually the sole recipient of Steve’s bossy side, but damn if it didn’ come out in full force once he was bed-ridden and helpless. Bucky didn’t mind. Bucky thought it was hilarious. Said he felt like a king, getting waited on hand and foot, and seemed to find nothing but humor in how serious Steve was about taking care of him.

It was just real important to Steve, being the one in charge. He’d never been in charge of much, certainly never himself, and it was the first time he could remember not being the one in bed, not being the one ‘sposed to lay still and take the help offered ‘em. He’d always been someone else’s responsibility. Now, Bucky was  _his_  responsibility. Bucky’s  _recovery_ was his responsibility, and he made sure to follow all of his ma’s instructions right to the letter. Didn’t once let Buck outta his sight. He missed school for him. He even missed Mass. 

Bucky just seemed to like the attention. He wasn’t like Steve; he’d always been sturdy and strong and only got laid up every once in a while, not even twice a year. And it was always over quick. And while it was going on, he got to have somebody’s undivided attention. Apparently that was real important for a kid with three younger siblings. Said he liked it best when it was Steve caring for him, though, because Steve was just plain good at it.

"Y’ve got a real gentle touch, Stevie," Bucky’d said. Steve was wrapping a fresh set of stitches on Buck’s forearm, curtesy of his graceless run-in with a shard of glass during a game of stickball. Steve snorted, not cuz Bucky was wrong but cuz, at eleven, Steve was already getting real sick of being thought of as ‘gentle’ and ‘soft’. "I mean it. It already feels better."

Steve got a nasty impulse he was just young and contrary enough to take. He pressed his thumb against the stitches until Bucky yelped and jerked his arm away. Bucky swore. “Whad’ya do that for?” he asked, arm cradled tight to his chest.

"Suck it up, Barnes," Steve’d said. He didn’t look at him, was pointedly focused on returning the wrap and iodine to their proper places in his ma’s first-aid case. He suspected he’d just started a fight the likes a which he’d never fought before. Bucky was his only friend and he’d never gone an' hurt him deliberately. Here he had, and he sat there waitin’ for Bucky to get mad back, was bracing for it. Was just steamed enough to tell himself he didn’t care.

To his surprise, Bucky laughed. Called him an asshole, kicked him under the table and shot him a smile. 

Around then, Steve learned to lightened up. At least where being Bucky’s nurse was concerned, anyway. Sure, he still cared. He still made sure he changed Buck’s bandages on time, got the cuts cleaned up and his ribs set right, he just got t’where he could laugh about it, too. It just became so damn  _common_. They were at their worst in their early teens—Bucky felt invincible and Steve wanted to prove he could be, too—and summers were spent putting ice on one shiner after another after another.

Steve laughed at Bucky’s broken toe, his busted lip. Bucky laughed with him, was always ready to laugh at himself, but drew the line when it came to Steve, never liked laughing about Steve’s pain. So Steve laughed for him—breathy, bitter, one-note laughs flecked with blood, nearly silent, what quickly turned into coughs. Laughed when his ear went bad. Laughed when he woke up and couldn’t see green or yellow no more. 

Shit got a lot less funny when they grew older and a busting a knuckle or bruising a rib meant trouble for Buck at work, when losing that job could mean not making rent and Steve still couldn’t keep down a steady one’a his own. There were fights over it—fights over Steve picking fights, when he’d always picked fights, when he was just doing what was  _right_ , Buck, just saying what every decent person around was thinking at the time. Bucky tried talking sense, tried to be practical, but Steve didn’t wanna hear about how keeping his mouth shut was the ‘smart’ thing, so he turned around and picked fights over Bucky always coming to his rescue when he didn’t need his help (yes you do,  _yes you do_ ). There was no winning with either of ‘em, they were both just too stubborn, so they kept runnin' the same arguments into the ground month after month. Talked over each other until they couldn’t stand the sound of their own voices and the arguments petered off into sullen silences that seemed to fill the whole flat.

For the first time in their lives, Bucky started holding back on apologies—he was too worn thin and he wasn’t messing around about this, Steve, he was  _serious_ —so Steve was finally forced to learn how to swing an olive branch of his own. He never really said “I’m sorry”, because he wasn’t, he wouldn’t be, he  _couldn’t_ , not about  _this_ , not about who he  _was_ , which Bucky understood, he did, so he took what Steve did say and forgave him enough to call him a punk and pull him into a hug.

Sometimes, though, they still tried to laugh. They’d joke and make digs and sometimes even get the other to smile. They tried to laugh, it just didn’t happen much. 

Ain’t nothing to laugh about this time. It wasn’t Bucky’s fault, Steve ain’t gonna make it like it is for some stupid joke. This never should’ve happened. This isn’t  _fair_  and it never should’ve  _happened_.

Steve tells himself, when Bucky wakes up, he’s gonna give it to him straight. He’s gonna make sure he knows he didn’t earn this, that the blame falls squarely on the assholes what pressured him into wearing those damnable bracelets in the first place. Not him. All he fucking did was take a  _shower_.

Steve told him to take the shower. Steve put the bracelets on him.

He’s part of the assholes to blame, here. And he’ll be stern about it, too. Won’t let Bucky try and bend the truth just to save Steve’s pride a bruising. Steve did this to the both of them. So long as Buck’s okay, Steve’s pretty sure his own pride will make do. That’s what he’ll tell him. He’ll tell him that, soon as he wakes up and gets his wits about him. 

And he's gonna wake up soon. Right? ...right?

The pressure behind Steve’s eyes gets stronger, the pain turning sharp and insistent and Steve shoves the thoughts away. He can’t do this right now. He’s gotta keep it together. For Buck. What good’s crying gonna do him? Fucking no good at all is what.

Steve sucks a quick breath in through his nose and forces his attention away from his own thoughts and onto Sam. Sam, who’s giving Bucky what looks like a down and dirty check-up. This weren’t really the help Steve’d expected, but he ain’t complaining. There’s an air about Sam, about the sure way he moves and the serious set to his brows, that tells Steve he knows exactly what he’s doing and why. Sam’s trained, no doubt about it. Steve’s surprised, but he swallows his questions. They aren’t important and he don’t wanna go distracting Bucky’s best chance at first-aid.

Steve never learned what to do for someone who’s been electrocuted. He wouldn’t know what to look for, and he’s so rattled, he’d forgotten the few things he  _did_  know, like checkin’ if Bucky’d swallowed his own tongue or, hell, bitten it in half. He hadn’t, thank God. Sam knew and he'd checked, and Bucky hadn't.

Sam doesn’t tell Steve what he finds when he checks Bucky’s eyes, or why he touches his chest, arm, face and leg in quick succession, but once he's done checkin' Buck's pulse, he sits back on his heels and looks Steve in the eyes. “We’re gonna need more help moving him—we’ll need Thor, probably—”

"You go," Steve says. He could hear the choice in Sam’s phrasing and no, no, he’s not leaving Bucky’s side. Not again. Not until he’s forced to. Until the spell ends and he’s turned back into the Captain, he’s staying right beside Buck and no one’s makin’ him do otherwise. 

Sam nods, like he knew that’s what Steve would say. “A’right. Be right back.” His eyes linger on Steve, like he wants to say more, but he wisely chooses against it and heads out the shower stall and through the bathroom door. 

Steve swallows, closes his eyes and drops his chin to his chest. After a long second, he forces himself to look down at Buck’s head, still cradled in his lap. At his slightly parted lips, the white slivers of his two crooked front teeth. 

'Bucky' wasn't just a play on his middle name. That was part of it, sure, but when they were little, Bucky had bucked teeth like nobody's business. He'd owned it—Bucky owned everything, he was always so  _confident_ —he played it up, tucked his bottom lip behind those suckers and quoted Bugs Bunny until his impression was practically perfect. He grew into them, but they grew in crooked, the right one twisted to slide in front of the left. 

He may not know that about himself anymore...

Steve takes his fingers from Bucky’s hair and touches the line of his cheek with the side of his thumb. Strokes the damp skin and tells himself he’ll be alright. Buck’ll be alright, because Steve’s gonna see to it. He'll help him be himself again. Even when Steve isn’t himself anymore, he’ll still be there for Bucky. There’s no way he couldn’t. He loves him too much.

Surely that hasn't changed. God, he hopes that hasn't changed.


	46. 19th Interlude

"Thor? I'm gonna need your help moving Bucky to the bed."

"Aye."

"Sam? How is he?"

"He could be worse. Showin' signs of shock but the symptoms aren't consistent--"

"What do you mean 'aren't consistent'?" 

"He's--it's hard to explain, he's just not a typical patient. He's got the the serum--seems like its already doin' its thing. Part of his body's healing and part of it isn't, yet. So maybe he'll be fine. I don't know. It may be what he needs is a real doctor."

"We have a few on call--"

"Have they been cleared?"

"Yes, they have. And they're aware of the risks. We knew Sergeant Barnes would need medical attention eventually--if not now then during his rehabilitation. Sam; if you think he could benefit from a second opinion, I'll make the call."

"Thank, Ms. Potts, but let's, uh. Let's wait on that." 


	47. 7:23 am

The Captain already knows what happened to Bucky. He knows more than just a brief summary of events, he’s actually read the inch-and-a-half thick folder Steve hadn’t flipped past the first page of. Hell, Steve hadn’t even  _looked_  at the first page. Steve never made it past the goddamn inside cover. 

The Captain knows what happened between him and Bucky in the present. He knows what happened on the freeway. He knows why Bucky took a shot at him and didn’t miss. 

The Captain knows how to take care of himself. He’s a ‘super soldier’, a  _superhero,_ and no one’s gonna bat an eye at the idea of leaving him on his own. No one’s gonna care if he gets a bruise or two doing what he needs to do. No one’s gonna talk over him or talk down to him and no one’s gonna be able to stop him if he decides he and Bucky ain’t gonna deal with this crap anymore.

Bucky’s better off with the Captain. 

Steve tells himself this over and over and still he doesn’t want to go. 

Honestly, he  _doesn’t_  know if Bucky’s better off. He can tell himself he will be all he wants, he don’t believe it. Could believe a ‘probably’ but not a ‘certainly’, cuz he can’t shake the feeling what he’s doing is leaving Bucky in the hands of a total stranger. Sure, a stranger with Steve’s face, but a stranger nonetheless and now ain’t the time to play fast and loose with who’s seeing to Bucky’s care. 

He trusts Sam more than he trusts the Captain. At least he’s met Sam. At least—

Bucky makes a small noise—nothing more than a shaky exhale, but it’s  _something_  and Steve’s eyes immediately snap back into focus. Bucky’s face twitches minutely, he swallows and—he goes still again. Drops back into unconsciousness. 

Steve tries to keep his breathing steady, to not let the relief overwhelm him. Now would probably be the  _worst_  time for an attack.

"Bucky?" he asks, softly. "Bucky, can you hear me?" There’s no response—maybe he’s being  _too_  soft. Bucky doesn’t so much as twitch.

Before Steve can try again, there’s movement at the front of the room and he lifts his eyes to see Sam and Thor pass the threshold of the bathroom. Sam gestures Thor towards the shower stall, toward Steve, then kneels in front of the drawers by the sink and starts loading his lap with towels. Steve pulls his eyes back to Thor just as the giant man comes to a stop beside him and takes a knee.

"Do not worry," Thor says. He drapes a towel over Bucky, covering him from sternum to shin. "Your friend is very strong, and should he need aid in his recovery, there are physicians not but a call away that will see that he is made well. It may be all he is in need of is rest." 

"I thought for a moment he was startin’ to wake up," Steve says. He feels compelled to tell it to someone, but it comes out sounding childish, especially compared to Thor’s sure, low tones. Steve swallows. "Why can’t he see one’a those doctors now?" 

Sam starts to answer him from the door of the stall, but most of it is lost before Steve’s got his head lifted and turned the right way. All he catches is “—telling what his history with ‘em is.”

The muscle in Steve’s jaw flexes before he forces out, “would you say that again?”

Sam doesn’t question it, don’t so much as blink, just repeats; “We don’t know how he’ll react around medical equipment. There’s no telling what his history with ‘em is.”

"What’s that ‘sposed to mean?" Steve asks, brows pinching and voice going sharp. 

"Hydra—the people who had him—they kept him on a lot of chemicals," Sam says. "Putting him on an IV, even just to rehydrate him, it could end badly. It could freak him out." Sam’s keeping his expression calm and serious—he’s looking Steve right in the eyes. "If he needs it, though, Steve, he’ll get it. I just wanna get him moved to the bed first."

Steve wants to argue but of course, what does he know?

He knows hospitals have made Bucky uncomfortable since the first time Steve almost died in one. He knows Bucky hates needles—not the curved ones Steve and his ma would use to stitch his wounds, but the straight and hollow ones that take stuff outta ya or put stuff in. He knows he himself never got past the inside cover of that inch-and-a-half thick folder and wouldn’t’ve considered the possibility Bucky’s relationship with doctor’s might’ve changed in 70 years if someone else hadn’t brought it up first. 

His eyes drop. They land on the metal of Bucky’s left shoulder and a cold shiver works its way up Steve’s spine. A doctor most certainly did  _that._

Steve nods. 

When he looks up again, Sam’s taking his arm full of towels out of the room, which leaves Steve and Thor and Bucky. Steve still doesn’t know what to make of Thor, so when the man sets his hand on Steve’s shoulder in what he's sure is meant to be a comforting gesture, Steve ain't really sure what to do. This is the first time he’s been left alone with the man. 

He keeps his eyes on Bucky, head still resting in Steve’s lap, hair a big dark mess whats formed a nice big wet spot across the top of Steve’s thighs. Steve’s wet all over, actually, white shirt sticking to his shoulders and jeans soaked through from ankle to knees. He’ll have to change again, after this. He doesn’t think he cares anymore what he's put in. He'll wear one of the Captain's shirts, what would it matter?

Whatever Sam was doing with the towels, he doesn’t dawdle, and is back in something like thirty seconds. He places himself at Bucky’s feet and looks to Thor. “You ready?”

Thor takes his hand from Steve and nods. “Aye.”

Thor tries to lift Bucky into sitting upright, but he’s got his hands under Buck’s shoulder blades and that arm—that metal arm—it is  _not moving_. Bucky’s shifted several inches one way while the arm stays put in the other. Deep, angry bruising blooms across Bucky’s chest as inner tissues start to tear. Thor drops Bucky just as Bucky opens his eyes and gasps. 

The arm moves. Ever since it was disabled, its been laid out by Bucky’s side, left all bent at this odd angle, all the panels and plates what make it up gone loose, showing all the gaps, looking not unlike a normal arm whats had its bones all crushed. Now it moves. It twitches and jerks in uneven bursts as Bucky screws his eyes shut and hisses out from between his teeth. Some panels snap shut while others wind up stuck, left flared out, shivering as the servos struggle to unlock again. 

Thor takes Bucky by the wrist and shoulder and lifts the arm off the wet tiles just a second before the arm begins to spark. Bucky muffles a moan of pain by turning his head and pressing his face against Steve’s leg. 

“ _Bucky_ ,” Steve says. He doesn’t know where to start. He doesn’t know what to  _do_. 

He watches the hand snap audibly at the end of his wrist. The fingers twist and curl as the elbow clicks in and out of place. 

"Get Anthony," Thor tells Sam, tone suddenly authoritarian and all together new. Sam turns on his heel and sprints for the door just as Bucky shifts enough to free his other arm out from under him. He starts smacking his flesh hand against the metal, movements sloppy and uncoordinated, and Steve can’t tell if he’s trying to brute force the plates back into place or if he's just reacting to the pain. The metal hand has managed to form a fist.


	48. 20th Interlude

"Maria? Yes, I’m going to need you to tell our guests from São Paulo that unfortunately I will not be able to make to our meeting today. Have Laura and Michaels handle the negotiations if they choose not to reschedule. I also need you to have Sgt. Barnes’ doctors put on stand-by for the next 24 hours. The situation here is.. _delicate_ , but I think we about have it under control—What was that?”

"Sounded like Thor—"

“ _Sir, you are needed in the ba—_ ”

"Stark!"  _  
_

“ _—throom._ ”

"Shit! Coming!"

"Maria; I’ll call you back."


	49. 7:29 am

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You lovely wonderful people kept asking for me to come back to this. Thank you so much for asking. It's the only reason I've found the courage to keep going. Fingers crossed that the next chapter will be out within the year.

Tony turns out to be absolutely useless. 

Steve already has his belt out its loops and fit between Buck’s teeth by the time Sam returns, cavalry in tow. Bucky’s still thrashing, trying to throw Thor off and dig his fingers into the seam of his metal arm at the same time, and Steve’s holding the ends of the belt like a fucking bridle in some half-baked attempt to keep Buck’s head still. 

It ain’t like the time Bucky chewed a belt while Steve and Johnny set his shoulder. Ain’t like anything but a fucking nightmare and when the Captain’s friends push Tony forward, Steve is just desperate enough to hope, to put some fucking  _faith_ in the asshole if he’s able to just _do_ something to _end this_. 

But Steve looks up at Tony and can see immediately the guy’s useless. No clue what Thor was expecting, calling for him by name, but it couldn’t’ve been this. Tony’s eyes are wide and overwhelmed, even when Thor barks out the obvious, “the  _arm_ , Stark, fix the arm!" 

"Wha–I–Look, I-I dunno what you expect me to do when he's  _thrashing around_ like that!” Tony says. To his credit, he’s trying to get closer, but he’s got the posture of someone being forced to approach a mad dog, none too eager to get within the reach of its chain cuz the fucker’s got teeth. “Can you jus’–if he were just a little–” And then he snaps his mouth shut, eyes widening and mouth twisting as something seems to come to him. “Where’s the band–we’ll put that back on and disable it–”

“Are you nuts?” Steve yells, half out of anger and half to hear himself over the pounding what’s joined the ringing in his ears. “The hell you think  _did_ this to him?!" 

"It’s too heavy disabled,” Thor adds. “Look–” he pauses to grapple and wrench Bucky’s fingers out from around his braid. “–look at his  _chest_ , his body can’t withstand the weight of it!" 

Tony does look and his face immediately scrunches into something between horror and sympathy. Bucky’s chest is a mess, left side nearly black with blood blisters, deep internal bruising. There’s rips in his skin what  _weren’t_ made by his own fingers, but by the scarring splitting open as the arm pulls and seams give. 

A few more seconds pass, attention in the room divided between Tony and Bucky–one utterly failing at assisting the other–before Natasha’s voice cuts through Buck’s muffled shouts. The words are something gruff and half-hissed and, at the moment, unintelligible to Steve, and Bucky must hear ‘em because he just…just goes still.

Just like that, drops his flesh hand and lies there, awake, staring up at the ceiling with tears still leaking from his eyes as his metal arm shutters and clicks out of his control.

Everyone looks to Natasha. 

"What’d you _do?”_ Steve asks.

“Told him to be still. In Russian.” She glances from Steve to Sam and back again. “Lucky guess.”  

“Lucky _guess_ ,” Steve repeats, unable to make the connection through his shock. The sudden stillness seems impossible to him--Bucky was _just_  moving, was _just_ screaming out and straining against Steve’s belt and body and now he’s--he’s just not? 

“ _Stark_ ,” Thor says, and Steve realizes he’s not the only one what’s been gobspacked at Bucky’s reaction. Tony, to his credit, only mumbles to himself--“Right, down to work”--before dropping to his knees beside the larger, blond man and focusing on the malfunctioning metal. 

Steve swallows his own panic. Now’s not the time for questions, no. Natasha can explain later. What’s important now is Bucky and while Steve can’t make him stop bleeding or fix whatever the electricity and water did to his robot arm, he _can_ keep his friend company. 

He does know a little Russian. 

It’s not much, but you pick some up when you’re around people who speak it every other day. He paints--or, painted--signs for a butcher shop owned by a family of Russian Jews. Has since 4th grade. The special, the prices, writ on a chalk board out front, every mornin’ before it opens, not for money but for a quarter pound of liver that Steve had to choke down before school. He needed the iron--anemia and all that.

He picked up things. 

He whispers them to Bucky now, as he wipes the tears from his cheeks, watching as Bucky’s eyes continue to stare straight ahead, fluttering in time with the muscle in his jaw as it flexes around the belt. He’s still in pain. He’s just--

Russians had him, that’s right. It was there, on the inch-and-a-half folder. 

Fuck, so he’s in pain and because he was told to be still, he just can’t show it anymore. 

Steve tries to remember every endearment Yury shot to the women customers, while Steve touched up the chalk in the evening. Every consoling word Yury’s mother would murmur to his younger siblings as she pet their hair. He tries to remember, to say them right, to reach Bucky where he’s stuck, inside his own head, so he’ll know Steve’s here and he’s gonna _fix_  things and he’s going to make sure Bucky’s _alright_. 

“Steve.”

Steve jerks his head up to see Sam, and. For the first time maybe ever, he sees Sam and Sam seems nervous. “What,” asks Steve.

“I--are you sure? You should be...doing that?”

Before Steve can answer, there’s a series of clicks and Bucky jerks in his lap and Tony practically moans in relief. Steve’s eyes dart to the arm. It’s still twitching, but it more...settling now. All the plates lay flat, shifting in more rhythmic, controlled ways than before. Tony sits back and laughs into a hand, high pitched and a little manic. 

Bucky’s jaw still works around the belt but slowly, by _inches,_ he begins to relax, too.


	50. A Second Special Interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> wE MADE IT TO FIFTY CHAPTERS HOLY SHIT

It doesn’t really know why this is happening. 

It’s not supposed to question these things, only listen. 

It listens now, even though it is confused about the Point.

Sometimes it is meant to learn from these moments of pain, sometimes things are greater than its understanding and it merely needs to endure. Sometimes there is no point at all, it merely malfunctions. 

This felt like one of those times; a malfunction. There had been several, where it’s left arm was concerned. It is a tricky piece of machinery–it took a lot of time and trial and error and pain to get right. It doesn’t remember these things so much as know they happened. They too were painful to forget completely. Pain always leaves an impression, even if the scars change year by year.

It would not have cried out, or thrashed, or acted violently if it were in complete control. It knows better. It knows how to react to pain, just as it knows when to take Control and Listen. 

It listens now.

The words said to it are clumsy and poorly pronounced, the accent obvious and recognizable. They are also…kind. 

It doesn’t really know why this is happening. 

It’s not supposed to question these things, only listen. 

It listens now, even though its is confused about the Point. 

Fingers, wet and wrinkled and shaking, push hair away from its eyes. It does not follow the movement above it with its eyes, but certain details pass into view. The speaker has the same face as the Man who is their Mission. 

 _My friend, my_ friend _, my brother,_ my Steve, _Steve_ , Steve. 

These are not its thoughts, because it has no friends, brothers or lovers. 

It thinks instead that it sees these fractured thoughts mirrored back to it on the Mission's face, in the clumsy words with an obvious accent. 

His friend, his brother.  _“Bucky.”_

It doesn’t know why this is happening, but it thinks it’s beginning to understand. 

It’s not supposed to question these things, and it won’t. It merely begins to understand why the thoughts that are not its own come with strong, strange emotions. 

It listens.

 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Turn Back the Clock (the podfic)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2565788) by [Bluandorange](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluandorange/pseuds/Bluandorange)




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